LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 
Shelf _+£\h% 

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



\ Voice frog tge Drieqli. 



TO THE 

Members of the Spring Garden Congregation, 

Philadelphia, 

these Sermons ape affectionately 

dedicated, as a token 

of gratitude, 

By their Friend and Minister. 



** 



A VOICE 



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FROM THE 



ORIENT. 



%erie£ of Germans 



Mangasar M. Mangasarian, 






Pastor Spring Garden Church. 



'Religion is the master element in man, it is meant to rule.'' 



Thought, 
" The golden key 
Which opes the Palace of Eternity.' 




PHILADELPHIA : 

J . G . DITMAX. 

1885. 



3 



Wl 



Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1885, by J. G. DlTMAN, 

in the office of the Librarian of Congress, 
at Washington, D. C. 



Press of 
J. F. DICKSOX & CO., 

PHILADELPHIA. 



PUBLISHER'S NOTE. 



To gratify the wishes of a large number of 
Mr. Mangasarian's friends, I have requested him 
to consent to the publication of a few of his ser- 
mons. Most of them were delivered since his 
return from the Orient, about three months ago, 
and were preached before very large congregations. 
I have no doubt that this will widen the Preacher's 
influence for doing good. And if it accomplishes 
this end, the publisher will have his reward. 

J. G.!Ditman. 



CONTENTS. 



1. The Armenians, or The Christians of the 

Orient, ........ 13 

2. Constantinople, or Christ Among- the 

Turks, 29 

3. Heart Fragrance, 45 

4. What is God? 61 

5. Eecognition of Friends in Heaven, . . 83 

6. The Mission of Woman, .... 105 

7. The Unpardonable Sin/ 121 

8. A Lecture on the Times, . . . . 135 

9. Immortality of the Soul, .... 153 

10. Sunshine and Shadow, .... 175 

11. Eeason and Religion, 193 



INTRODUCTION. 



About four years ago I came to this country as 
an utter stranger. To receive a better and more 
thorough education for the Gospel Ministry was 
my main object. I began the study of the English 
language when thirteen years of age, and in 1876 
graduated at Robert College, on the Bosphorus. In 
1877, when nineteen years old, I began to preach 
in the Congregational Church, at Marsovan, Asia 
Minor. In a few months I was ordained over this 
Church, with a congregation of 7-800. My desire 
to visit America and carry on my special studies 
was so great, that in 1880, with the consent of my 
people, I came to this country and entered the Semi- 
nary at Princeton, N. J. The first few months in 
this country, I felt very home-sick, and often sought 
a secret spot and shed tears as I thought of the dis- 
tance of 7,000 miles between me and my home. 
America was a new world to me. I was a perfect 
stranger to everybody. This loneliness and isola- 



2 Introduction. 

tion added to my misery. I cannot explain why, 
but one of the professors took a special interest in 
me. On one occasion there was a tap at my door, 
I- opened, and Prof. A. A. Hodge entered my room, 
took a chair, and asked me of the friends and the 
home I had left behind. My heart was full, — and 
there I felt the power of his sympathy. From that 
day the Doctor took a deep interest in me, intro- 
duced me to the churches and Christian people and 
made me welcome at his home. I could go to his 
study under all circumstances, feeling perfectly free. 
My first letter from Princeton to my people on the 
other side was full of Dr. Hodge. It gives me pleas- 
ure to-day, to acknowledge that my position as a 
minister in Philadelphia, I owe to his friendship, 
advice, and influence upon my character. 

But I must speak of another person. One warm 
day in August, while walking on Broad Street 
and asking for Dr. Wylie's church, a certain gen- 
tleman, with an open brow and kind face, put his 
arm around me, and with a smile asked me where I 
was going. " To hear Dr. Wylie." " Good, come 
with me," said he and took me to the church and 
prevailed upon me to occupy the pulpit that after- 
noon. With the kind consent of the pastor, I 
preached, and there, that afternoon, I won the heart 



Introduction. 3 

and friendship of George H. Stuart, the gentleman 
who had discovered me on the street. Through him 
I was introduced into the pulpits of the city and 
soon had some excellent friends in the West Arch 
Street church, the North Broad Street church, the 
Second church, the North Sixth Street church, 
Bethany church, and many others. I soon forgot 
my home-sickness and began to fall in love with 
the country. 

About two years ago, the congregation of the 
Spring Garden church gave me a unanimous call to 
become their pastor. The church then was in a very 
deplorable condition. Already, they had had a 
number of meetings, advocating the sale of the 
building. Most of the members had withdrawn 
their letters. There were only a handful of the 
strong friends of the churoh left. 

I accepted the call, entered into the work with 
enthusiasm, and to-day, no minister has a larger 
number of hearers and a warmer, kinder people than 
I have at Eleventh and Green. Quite a number of 
prophecies were made at the time. One day, being 
in New York, I went to see a leading Christian 
preacher of the city. After being introduced to him 
by a friend who had accompanied me from Phila- 
delphia, I told the eminent divine, that while study- 



4 Introduction. 

ing at Princeton, I would like to do something in the 
line of self-support, and asked him whether he 
could or would be kind enough to introduce me to 
some of the churches needing a supply. The cler- 
gyman was wroth, bringing his fist down on the 
table with a thump, he said : — " No, sir, do you think 
the Americans would leave the American preacher 
and come to hear an Armenian ? Why ! suppose 
here is a church where there is an American minis- 
ter, and here is one where there is an Armenian ; 
everybody will say, we don't want the Armenian, 
and go to hear the American." Similar words of en- 
couragement were spoken to me by others. But my 
great inspiration came from the people. Their grasp 
of the hand was warm. Their sympathy was great. 
I had faith in the American people, in the genius 
of American civilization, in the breadth and impar- 
tiality of the American heart. In these, I have not 
been disappointed, but my highest expectations have 
been fulfilled. I am constrained to say that I love 
the American people. I owe a great deal to their 
generosity and kindness. Forgetting that I was a 
foreigner, they came to hear me and filled my 
church from pulpit to vestibule, and from wall to 
wall. For two years they have given me their 
interest, co-operation and cheer. 



Introduction. 5 

Out of gratitude, I dedicate this book to the kind 
people of the Spring Garden Congregation, It is 
an imperfect and humble gift. But just as it is, 'tis 
a token of reverence and gratitude. If I succeed to 
strengthen the tie that has bound us together for 
two years so happily, I shall feel greatly rewarded. 
That you will forgive, where your forgiveness is 
asked, I am sure. I am also sure that you will en- 
courage me to do better in the future. There is no 
happiness comparable to that, which a minister 
enjoys, when standing in the pulpit, or moving 
among his members, he feels the electric sparks 
falling upon his soul, from tibfe warm, sympathetic 
and unanimous heart oi Ms congregation. I have 
had this, and therefore I can say that I made a 
wise choice when I entered the ministry, and a wiser 
choice, when in the face of discouraging circum- 
stances, I accepted the call of the Spring Garden 
Church. The best chapter of my life, I have written 
in this community; the highest moments of inspira- 
tion I have enjoyed in this pulpit; the greatest con- 
solation and reward have come to me from this 
field. 

The aim of this book is not to teach a new the- 
ology. My position does not differ from that of any 
other minister of the Evangelical church. If I have 



6 Introduction. 

said things, seemingly out of harmony with the 
general teachings of the Presbyterian pulpit, it is 
not done from a desire to differ or criticise. I have 
spoken in plain speech, my convictions and beliefs. 
I have always believed that cowardice is out of 
place in the pulpit. By an earnest, reverent, sin- 
cere search and discussion of the truth, nothing is 
lost, but much gained. Investigation is the road to 
truth. Free speech is the sacred right of the pulpit. 

" Ye earnest men, no longer shrink 

From speaking what you truly think ; 

Proclaim the truth you find, 
And let free search, free speech, free thought, 

By blood of ancient worthies bought, 
Advance the human mind." 

" Heed not the shaft too surely cast, 
The foul and hissing bolt of scorn, 
For with thy side shall dwell at last, 
The victory of endurance born." 

" Truth crushed to earth, shall rise again; 
The eternal years of God are hers ; 
But error wounded writhes in pain, 
And dies among his worshpipers. " 

" Another hand thy sword shall wield, 
Another hand the standard wave, 
Till from the trumpet's mouth is pealed 
The blast of triumph o'er the grave." 



Introduction. 7 

I am a minister in a Presbyterian church, and I 
love and honor that body. I love it, because of its 
freedom, breadth and depth ; I love it, because of its 
glorious past, and its promises for the future. But 
in a higher and broader sense I belong to no sect, no 
ism, no denomination and no party. My individ- 
uality is not swallowed up in any denomination. I 
belong to the Christian church as I understand it, 
and not as somebody else interprets it for me. Christ 
has made a revelation to the individual Christian, 
and He is to me, what I make Him to be. I must 
see Him with my own eyes, feel Him with my own 
heart, and comprehend Him with my own mind. 
You cannot fasten a creed, or a belief on the soul, 
as you fasten a rope to the tree. The faith must be 
the outgrowth of the soul. Individuality of thought 
in the domain of religion is^the immortal principle 
of Protestantism. Between the individual soul and 
God, no church, no sect and no council can stand. 

Christianity is the religion of joy and love. Jesus 
is the author of spiritual freedom. God is a father 
in the broadest and kindest sense. And His word in 
its spiritual outlines, is the infallible rule of thought 
and conduct. 

Life is more than creed. A living faith in the 
person of Christ, is more than a belief in dogmas* 



8 Introduction. 

A shiningly Christian character is more than a pas- 
sive adherence to sectarian isms. A broad, inclusive, 
Good Samaritan Church, is more than an exclusive 
and narrow denomination. 

A Church is not Christianity. A sect is not re- 
ligion. There is no such thing as " Presbyterian 
Faith," or " Baptist Hope," or " Methodist Love." 
Faith, hope, and love, are absolute verities, and be- 
long not to the phases, but to the essence of religion. 
Our Father in Heaven, has one Church. It is 
neither the Episcopalian, Lutheran, nor Unitarian. 
It is Christian. And all who live Christ, indepen- 
dent of creed and ism, are members in good and 
regular standing of that Church. These are some 
of the thoughts I have endeavored to emphasize in 
the following sermons. 

It is with much diffidence that I consent to their 
publication. I am fully conscious of their imper- 
fection and poverty. The earnest wish of a large 
number of friends to have them in a permanent 
form, has called forth this volume. Had I the time, 
I would give them the benefit of a complete recon- 
struction, but under the pressure of pastoral and 
pulpit duties, I am compelled to offer them to the 
public, in the main, as they were originally delivered 
to my people. 



Introduction. 9 

In the selection of the subjects for this work, I 
have consulted the wish of my congregation, whose 
warm and generous appreciation of my efforts in 
the pulpit, has been one of the chiefest delights and 
inspirations of my life. 

The fourth sermon was preached soon after my 
recovery from the effects of a sad accident and im- 
mediately before my departure for the Orient. For 
the few prayers in the book, I am indebted to the 
kindness of Mr. T. Johnson, the stenographer. 

Though the absence of the living voice, and the 
expressions of the speaker's face, greatly impoverish 
and weaken these sermons, still, I will pray that the 
dear God may render these silent pages instrumental 
in feeding the reader's soul with large thought, 
with strong faith, and with divine love. 

" They will reach the hand of the reader chill and 
discolored, but, when in the autumn evenings the 
leaves fall and lie on the ground, more than one 
glance may still fall on them, more than one hand 
still gather them. And even if they were despised 
of all alike, the wind may sweep them away, and 
prepare with them a couch for some poor man, on 
whom Providence looks down with love from the 
heights of Heaven." And thou, without whose 
notice not a sparrow falleth to the ground ; let this 



10 « Introduction. 

little volume be a message from Thy Love to Thy 
children ! 

66 The seeds are planted, and the Spring is near ; 
Ages of blight are but a fleeting frost ; 
Truth circles into truth. Each mote is dear 
To God, no drop of ocean is e'er lost ; 
No leaf forever dry and tempest tossed. 
Life-centers deathless underneath decay, 
And no true word or deed can ever pass away. 

1 c Work on, oh fainting heart, speak out thy truth ; 
Somewhere thy winged heart-seeds will be blown, 
And be a grove of pines ; from mouth to mouth 
O'er oceans, into speech and lands unknown, 
E'en till the long-foreseen result be grown 
To ripeness, filled like fruit, with other seed, 
Which time shall plant anew, and gather when men 
need." 



Mangasar M. Mangasarian* 



Philadelphia, Pa. 
January, 1885. 



THE ARMENIANS; 



OR THE 



CHRISTIANS OF THE ORIENT. 



ARMENIA. 



c ' Upon her soil they say those violets grew 
That wove a fragrant crown for the feet 
Of curious Eve, ere by that snake's deceit 
The world lost innocence and suffering knew ; 
Brave i^oe, riding with his motley crew, 
Her highest hill-top, black above the sheet 
Of turbid waters, haiPd as resting seat, 
And thither in his batter 'd life-boat drew." 

" Such honor had she in the years agone, 
Whose lands lie desolate beneath the sky, 
Whose people, now, the tyrant tramples on, 
While few are fain to listen to their cry. 
Oh ! pray we, that before her day be done 
She taste again the sweets of liberty." 



THE ARMENIANS, OR TEE CHRISTIANS 
OF THE ORIENT. 



" They shall come from the East." 
Matt, viii, 2. 



The Armenians are the children of Mount Ararat. 
It was on its summit, that the Ark of Noah rested, 
after the waters of the great deluge had subsided . The 
Bible speaks of the river Euphrates, as one of the 
four streams that ran through Eden, moistening its 
soil, watering its trees, and washing the flowers 
thereof. Both Ararat and Euphrates, the one 
crowned with the historic Ark, the other famous 
by the recollection of man's primitive grandeur in 
Paradise, are in the possession of that ancient and 
Oriental nation known to the world by the name of 
Armenian. 

The Armenian's fatherland lies under the shadow 
of the great Ararat, and it is girdled by the sacred 
and beautiful stream of the Euphrates. It is claimed 
by the Armenians that their ancestors descended 
the heights of Massius, and populated the whole 
world. The tree of humanity first found root in 
the Armenian soil, thence it w r as borne to other por- 



16 The Armenians, or the 

tions of the globe. Paradise, it is believed, was 
located in beautiful Armenia. To this very day, 
notwithstanding the fact that " where the Sultan's 
horse-hoof treads, there grass never grows again," 
is a terrestrial Paradise. The beauties of nature in 
that land transport the mind. What springs of the 
coolest and sweetest water ! What charming valleys 
of verdure and fields of flowers ! What olive-clad 
hills and rich vineyards of delicious fruit ! She is 
the first-born of all the ages. The early Fathers of 
mankind dwelt amid these picturesque vallej^s, and 
breathed the pure and virgin air of the eastern 
azure. Armenia therefore, more than any other 
country, is the womb of all nations. The birth- 
place of all civilization. The sun rise of mankind. 
Humanity, like a heaven-born infant, stood first 
upon her sky-kissing mountains, to survey the 
great globe of lands lying at its feet. Between her 
hills of immortal green, was rocked the cradle of 
the first human child. 

But I beg to lead you a step further. Armenia 
deserves your earnest study, for it was the first 
country in all the world to embrace the Christian 
faith. This does not stand on tradition, but on 
sound and indisputable historical basis. 

All great church and religious writers admit the 
authenticity of the evidence, which goes to prove, 
that, before the Greeks, and before the Romans, and 
before any other people on the face of the earth, 
the Armenians, as a country and as a nation, opened 



Christians of the Orient. 17 

their hearts and homes to the young Prophet of 
Nazareth and made him their Saviour. As early as 
the close of the third century these Christians of 
the Orient began to tear down their idolatrous tem- 
ples, demolish their heathen altars, dismiss their 
false gods, and make the religion of the Crucified the 
ruling and supreme faith of the people; the aristoc- 
racy as well as the common masses. The beginning 
of the fourth century found Christianity the reli- 
gion of the State. St. Bartholomew was the apos- 
tle of Armenia. Through his influence was raised 
another leader and mighty reformer in the person 
of Gregory the Illuminator, the brightest and largest 
star across the Armenian blue, who, in his lifetime, 
completely overthrew paganism, old and established, 
and enthroned Christianity, then despised and weak. 
Even to this day lives the dead hand of Great 
Gregory, with an immortal thought in it, guiding 
and moulding this people of ancient birth. 

Let me ask you to take but one more step, and 
that will carry you to the Middle or Dark Ages, 
the ages of superstition and papal rule ; of perse- 
cution and bondage of conscience ; of corrupt 
Christianity and a degenerate clergy ; of dangerous 
heresies and religious bigotry. When Rome 
stretched every nerve to introduce her anti-Christ 
into the Oriental Church and subdue them into 
obedience to the Pope, the brave Armenian 
Christians resolutely resisted popeism and barred 
their doors against the Western thief. They main- 



18 The Armenians, or the 

tained themselves free from the spiritual yoke of 
the tyrant who sat in St. Peter's chair. To this very 
day the See of Rome has no ecclesiastical control 
or social influence upon the Orthodox Armenian 
Church. On the other hand, Catholicism in the East 
bears deep marks of hard-dealt blows received at 
the hands of Armenian reformers. I am sorry to 
confess that the Catholic Church of late has made 
some progress in the Orient. The Jesuits, banished 
from the Occident, have gone thither with their 
mediaeval theology and church furniture. Yet, it 
exists as a sect, and not as the ruling Christian faith 
of the people. In all the religious battles the 
Gregorian Christians have come out victorious. 
They have held up the cross, the symbol of their 
faith, high in the air for sixteen hundred years. 
They have held fast the hem of Christ's garment 
under the cruelest and bloodiest persecutions that 
have ever befallen a nation on earth. They have 
kept the faith for sixteen centuries of war and of 
defeat at the hands of the barbarous tribes of the East. 

" Such honor had she in the year agone, 
Whose lands lie desolate beneath the sky. 

Whose people, now, the tyrant tramples on, 
While few are fain to listen to their cry. 

O ! pray we, that before her day be done. 
She taste again the sweets of liberty." 

From a political stand point, Armenia, at the 
present day is dead. She has no government of her 
own. She has no independence, no soil, no property 



Christians of the Orient. 19 

or power. Years ago, the Ottoman Turks overrun 
the country of Armenia, swallowed up her fairest 
portions, converted her walled cities to a ruinous 
heap of dust, and with a hand as heavy as lead 
and as sharp as steel, scourged the people into 
poverty, into bondage, into ignorance and into des- 
pair. Centuries of groaning and sighing, under the 
iron hoofs of Islam, have crippled and paralyzed her 
noblest and bravest energies, insomuch, that 
to-day there is hardly any sign, or spirit of life, 
patriotism, or of a general uprising in the breasts 
of the children of Haig. To-day, Armenia, is a 
mere geographical name, for there is no such 
country as Armenia. Xot long ago, the avaricious 
Russian opened his mouth and roared for the re- 
maining portion of the land, and now she holds 
her morsel fast between her teeth. The Shah of 
Persia, put forth his hand and took what was left. 
To-day three Oriental despots, Sultan, Czar and Shah, 
sit upon the neck of the Armenian, determined to 
crush him under their intolerable yokes. 

It is, however, only from a religious point of 
view, that I care to speak to you this evening. 
Let the parliaments of Great Britain, and of Russia, 
and of Germany, discuss the political salvation and 
situation of Christian Armenia, this most ancient, and 
most unjustly persecuted people of Christ, To an 
American audience, I would only lay emphasis 
upon the religious and spiritual aspects of the 
country. 



20 The Armenians, or the 

Four years ago, when I first came to this country, 
and began to preach in the Protestant churches, if 
I am not mistaken, the general opinion was, that I 
had been converted to Christianity from the Moslem 
faith. "Were you not a Mohammedan once?" 
was a question often asked. " There must be a 
great many converts from Islam in your country," 
was another remark frequently made. My greatest 
surprise was on being introduced as the Turk, or 
the Turkish preacher, or the Christian Turk, by the 
pastors of the churches. I do not blame the people 
of this country for knowing so little about the 
Armenians ; if there be a party to be blamed, they 
are the missionaires, who have not taken the 
pains to enlighten the people, and have willingly 
or unwillingly conveyed the impression, that these 
Armenians are a heathen people and need the gospel 
in the same sense, that the Tartar or the African 
do. Now the difference between Turk and 
Armenian, in language, in nationality, in race 
and in religion, is just as marked and irreconcil- 
able, as that existing between the Englishman and 
the Hindoos of East India, or between the Ameri- 
can and the red man in the West. The Turks are 
the followers and disciples of the Saracene Prophet. 
Mohammed is their Christ. The Armenians believe — 
in the language of Christendom — in one Lord 
Jesus Christ, and have followed Him for sixteen cen- 
turies. The Turks would never mingle with the 
Armenians, and gather up their skirts less they 



Christians of the Orient. 21 

be defiled by contact with those Christians, and 
the Armenian always thinks it an insult to be called 
a Turk. 

On the banks of the beautiful Euphrates there 
is the little, but, very old town of Mashgerd. Few 
mud huts are on the brow of a hill, washed at its base 
by the Ganges of Armenia. Some regal trees, softly 
whistling their music and keeping time with the mur- 
mur of the stream, mark the spot where I was born. 
Little did I think as I played with the sand and threw 
pebbles into the river, that I too, would be caught by 
the westward moving current and be borne over the 
seas to make my home in the far, far West, the land 
of the setting sun. At the time of my birth, my 
parents had already joined the American Congre- 
gational Church, and in their arms I received 
Christian baptism. I was born in the faith which I 
now preach. I have always been a Protestant. I 
have therefore just as good a birth-right claim to 
Christianity as any one in this large assembly. But 
the Gregorian Church to -which my parents formerly 
belonged, and from which they seceded, is not the 
Protestant Church. They do not recognize the Re- 
formation. Not having become Catholics, they think 
they never needed to protest and come out of the 
Catholic Church. The missionaries, about sixty 
years ago, began their work of proselyting in the 
Armenian Christian Church, and it was through 
them that my parents left the old national faith. 
If you bear with me, I will mention a few of the 



22 The Armenians, or the 

principal points of difference between the Gregorian 
and Protestant Creeds. I praj r you to hold fast this 
one fact, that we have been, before any other nation, 
a Christian people. In the cardinal and funda- 
mental truths of Scripture, they are sound and em- 
phatically Orthodox. The doctrines of the trinity, 
the atonement, the decrees, the divinity of Christ, 
inspiration of scriptures and salvation only through 
the supernatural Jesus, are firmly held and expound- 
ed in the Armenian pulpit. I admit, with great sor- 
row of heart, that from lack of enlightment, and by 
reason of poverty and persecution, the Church has 
neglected the education of her clergy, and through 
their indifference and sloth, there are to-day, some 
superstitions and errors of worship in the old Church, 
once purely evangelical. She has unscriptural 
forms and beliefs. Yet these do not make the essen- 
tial part of her creed. What Church is perfect? 
Where is the infallible creed ? Are the Protestant 
Churches entirely above reformation? I feel it in 
my deepest heart, that the advanced members of the 
Christian Ministry of the Armenian Church are 
honestly laboring to return to the Gospel purity of 
their martyr ancestors. To-day on the Patriarchal 
throne of Constantinople sits a Nersess Varjabedian,* 
on whose shoulders has fallen the mantle of Gregory, 
the Xavier of Armenia. A child of Armenian Chris- 



* This eminent and Godly and patriotic Patriarch died a 
few weeks after the date of this sermon. 



Christians of the Orient. 23 

tianity, he is devout, reverent, noble-hearted, great- 
souled and exceedingly sweet in disposition. Under 
his ecclesiastical reign the Armenian Church has 
been put through a hundred degrees of enlighten- 
ment and excellence. He preaches the pure truth, 
lives a shiningly Christian life and carries the 
dearest interests of his people close to his thrilling 
heart. Aye, the care of millions and millions of 
Armenians rests on his faithful shoulders. Arme- 
nia has one bosom swelling with this one emotion 
of love and reverence for Nersess Varjabedian. Per- 
haps you will say, Why, then, do our missionaries, 
instead of going to heathens, spend their time and 
money in converting the Christian Armenians into 
Congregationalism, Presbyterianism, or to the Bap- 
tist faith? I do not object to missionaries, repre- 
senting various sects, carrying a spiritual power and 
introducing a 'diviner energy into this old church. 
They are welcome to labor for the enlightenment 
and the leading out of what is noblest in these 
people. But I do think that it is a mistaken 
policy which aims at dividing and taking to pieces 
the old national organization and, instead, creating 
a number of sectarian isms. Here is a historic 
Christian institution. Against it are arrayed the 
forces of the Western denominations. First comes 
the Congregationalist, with his creed, his form of 
worship, and suc2eeds to tear a few from the mother 
church, and puts up a new building for the seceders. 
Then enters the Presbyterian, the Methodist, the 



24 The Armenians, or the 

Episcopalian, the Carmelites, and, last of all 
the close-communion Baptist. All these build 
with Western money sectarian churches and put 
up their respective machinery. The Ortho- 
dox Armenian Church turns to the Boards that 
support the missions and asks them whether it be 
honorable and fraternal thus to assail and directly 
or indirectly to undermine this Christian church. 
Should there be no Christian courtesy between the 
Church of the Orient and that of the Occident ? 
Has she no rights which the Western churches 
should respect ? It has often been answered that 
the missionaries at first desired to labor in the old 
church, but that they were refused and compelled 
to go out. Did they think they could do it in a day ? 
Does it not take time and effort and perseverance to 
bring about a glorious reformation ? How many 
years did they labor before they were forced out, 
and was it not their method and policy which 
brought upon them the suspicions of the people? 
Far be it from me, to antagonize missionary enter- 
prise. There is a sad need in the Armenian, as 
in a great many Protestant churches of more spir- 
itual life and less formality, and may God make 
the missionaries instrumental in kindling a new 
fire and devotion on our national altars. May 
their preaching stir the deeps of our souls and 
exalt our minds in reverence and worship of God's 
truth. Still, as an Armenian, with my Christian 
ancestors' blood throbbing in my heart, I will lift my 



Christians of the Orient. 25 

humble voice against this sectarianism of the West, 
which stands without, and throws stones at our 
institutions hoary with age, illustrious with her 
calendar of holy martyrs, honorable with her 
heroism and defence of the faith, against the semi- 
savage Turks, the barbarous Kurds, the fire- 
worshippers of Persia, and the jealous sects of Latin 
Christianty. For the cause of Christ upon a thousand 
fields, the Armenian has given his share all warm 
from the heart. Her history is sprinkled with the 
blood of glorious martyrdom. To-day this is all that 
poor, persecuted, conquered, exiled Armenia has. It 
is the one thing, the true patriotic and Christian 
Armenian loves. Break that national stronghold, 
which has inspired her children with moral courage, 
and Armenia is lost. Her sun sinks in gloom. Even 
if she had a few things peculiar to her worship, 
let her live and enjoy growth, progress and light. 

There are signs of a better day coming, the 
glorious morning will soon break and the sun of 
righteousness with healing on his wings will shed 
down his perpendicular rays upon this apostolic 
country. What ! will the many prayers of her 
saintly leaders be forever lost ? Will the good seed 
planted by the illuminator, rot in the soil ? Will 
not the blood shed at her shrine bring freedom 
to her sons? Already the Eastern hills are red 
with the purple promise of a magnificent sun-rise. 

Xot many weeks ago, I was in the city of Con- 
stantinople, and by invitation, went to hear a bishop 



26 The Armenians, or the 

of the Armenian church deliver a sermon, the large 
building was one mass of humanity, a sea of upturned 
faces. The eloquent preacher, dressed in gorgeous 
attire, after the custom of the Orient, ascended the 
pulpit. How still, how hushed the great throng, one 
could hear their breathing. The sermon was al- 
together evangelical, and full of sharp and search- 
ing thrusts at the sinner. I could see the moistened 
eyes in the audience, the lips trembling in prayer, 
and the glance of the eye turn heavenward. He 
held them spell-bound in his hand, and they drank 
in his sweet words, as the thirsty traveller stoops to 
drink from the silver edge of a flowing stream in the 
desert. He had no note, no manuscript, no written dis- 
course to chain his hand and mind, but spoke out of a 
heart warm and glowing. Are not sucli men and such 
preaching brave prophecies of a revival and spiritual 
life ? Not long ago I was at Amasia, which is about 
five hundred miles from Constantinople, and which 
is one of the most picturesque and historical towns in 
the East. Here Julius Csesar came, and not very 
far from it, fought his memorable battle, and wrote 
1 lis still more memorable letter, " Veni, Vidi, Vici." 
This city lies in the embrace of rocky and sublime 
mountains, which descend into the river Iris. As a 
Protestant preacher, the Armenians of that city in- 
vited me to occupy the pulpit of the bishop, stand 
in the old Church and speak to them concerning 
religion. Few years ago, this would have been im- 
possible, no Protestant minister could preach in 



Christians of the Orient. 27 

the Armenian Church. God has prepared His 
people for the reception of His truth, and if our 
methods be wise, kind and liberal, we will succeed 
in washing her ancient w r alls of all the stains of 
superstition and renew the immortal spirit of true 
worship in her temples. Armenia will be purged 
and saved through the power of Christ. She will 
become a polished and precious jewel in Emanuel's 
crown. In the great Orient, the Armenian Church 
shall be the guardian and evangel of truth. Arme- 
nia sighs for freedom, sighs for education, sighs for 
deliverance from oppression, sighs for the true and 
splendid light of religion. Yonder Heavens, that 
have been stormed with these piercing sighs, shall 
one day melt into a shower of benediction and 
blessing upon her desolate fields. 



CONSTANTINOPLE, OR CHRIST 
AMONG THE TURKS. 



"One God the Arabian Prophet preached to man, 
One G-od the Orient still 
Adores, through many a realm of mighty span, 
A God of power and will." 

u Islamism, following as it did on ground that was none of 
the best, has, on the whole, done as much harm as good to the 
human race. 

" It makes men tyrants or slaves, women puppets, religion 
the submission to an infinite despotism." 



CONSTANTINOPLE; OR CHRIST AMONG 
THE TURKS 



" Ash of me and I shall give thee the heathen for thine 
inheritance." — Psalm ii., 8. 



It was a charming day in July, the waters of the 
Euxine were murmuring softly, the tender blue of 
the Oriental sky was without a cloud. Our hearts 
beat high and loud, as we felt the breezes of our 
native land fanning our cheeks, and the old, old 
associations of home, transfigured into noiseless 
tears, unconsciously flowing from our eyes. As we 
sailed through the two rocks of ancient fame which 
guard the entrance into the Black Sea, through 
which, like an open gate, rushes forth the Bos- 
phorus and mingles with the Marmora, the feel- 
ing came over us, that we were the happiest beings 
on earth, for between us and home there was but a 
step. Slowly and smoothly we glided down the 
famous stream, with Europe and Asia on either hand. 
Hills peeping o'er hills, picturesque valleys, hand- 
some Oriental palaces, and a thousand glittering 
minarets, giving to the Bosphorus a loveliness, a 

c 



32 Constantinople, or 

charm, and a magnificence not to be surpassed. 
Yonder, centuries ago, Crysostom opened his mouth 
of gold, and his immortal voice can still be heard 
over the din and roar of traffic. There sat Persian 
Darius and watched his great army with pride and 
glory. Thither came the enthusiastic crusaders, 
under the influence of one Peter the Hermit, and 
leadership of Godfrey the Pious. Across this 
blue stream which gives to history some of its most 
dazzling pages, sailed the mythical Greeks in pur- 
suit of the golden fleece; the first Constantine for 
his Nova Roma, and Mohammed the Second, dressed 
its waters in wedding garments for the capture of 
this Oriental Queen from Christian grasp. With 
all this, your imagination is thronged, and while 
plunged in contemplation of these hard problems of 
history, suddenly your steamer turns her head 
towards Dolma Bapche, and Constantinople, the 
only imperial city in the world, bursts upon your 
vision. In the glory of the rising sun gleams the 
city of the Sultan adorned as an Eastern bride. 
Thou ! thronged metropolis of the Orient, that con- 
tainest all nationalities and languages and religions, 
who made thee so fair, thy waters so blue, thy 
heavens so tender, and thy foundations so sublime ? 
Constantinople is built on seven hills, and from all 
over the city we could see the Moslem Mosques lift- 
ing their proud brow against the Eastern azure. We 
turn our eyes towards Galata, and all at once the 
vision of home is before us. " Home again, from 



Christ Among the Turks. 33 

a foreign shore," we forgot all else, and with bound- 
ing heart we thank God, for home and fatherland. 
In the midst of the noise and confusion on deck, 
our neighbors hear us whispering the Song of the 
Occident, which seemed so much sweeter in the far 
far away Orient. 

'Mid pleasures and palaces though we may roam, 
Be it ever so humble there's no place like home ; 
A charm from the skies seems to hallow us there, 
Which, seek through the world, is ne'er met elsewhere. 

Home, home, sweet, sweet home, 
There's no place like home. 

My purpose in this discourse is to tell you some- 
thing about the religious aspect of Constantinople, 
the attitude of the haughty Turk towards the 
Cross of Christ. In one sense Istamboul is the 
Mecca of Mohammedanism. The Kaliph, successor 
to the dead prophet, who is at the same time Sultan 
of the Ossmanlies, resides here. This is the strong- 
hold of that Oriental faith which is the chief an- 
tagonist and foe of Christianity. Here rules Mo- 
hammed, whose dead body sleeps in a gilded tomb 
at Mecca, but whose thought for many centuries has 
chained the hands and pinched the forehead of 
every Mussulman. From the numerous minarets 
of this city ascends the cry that fashioned Moham- 
medanism, " There is no God but God, and Moham- 
med is his prophet." The learned Ulemas — doctors 
of Mohammedan law, the great preachers of the 



34 Constantinople, or 

Koran, the enthusiastic leaders of the people, — with 
green turban, flowing gown, and yellow sandals, 
walk its streets and guard the faith with jealous 
care. With the exception of Christianity, Islam is 
the only missionary and aggressive faith. More than 
Buddha, than Brahma, than Confucius, than Zoro- 
aster, lives Mohammed in the religious world. 
These other faiths have ceased to be missionary in 
spirit. The great field is occupied by Christ and 
Mohammed. Islam is making fresh advances 
every year in Africa, Australia, and the interior of 
India. Graduates from its theological halls mount 
on their camels, with a Koran in their bosoms, 
without salary or endowment, plunge into the 
deserts of Arabia or the wilderness of Africa to 
propagate the truth as it is in Mohammed. Like 
Jesus, Mohammed was at first persecuted by his 
own people and disbelieved by his own brethren. 
Mohammedanism at first, like Christianity, was 
very weak and helpless and limited in influence, 
but in the course of time it spread far and wide, 
swelling the number of the prophet's followers to 
hundreds of millions. In a few years Mohammed 
conquered Arabia, overturned her heathen temples, 
put to flight her false gods, established the worship 
of the one true God, and converted the " sand of 
the desert into explosive powder, blazing heaven- 
high from Delhi to Grenada." To this Saracen 
founder of religion was given 



Christ Among the Turks. 35 

u The monarch mind, the mystery of commanding, 
The birth-hour gift, the art Napoleon, 
Of wielding, moulding, gathering, welding, banding 
The hearts of thousands, till they moved as one." 

This day Islam is twelve hundred and seventy 
years old, with one-fifth of humankind under her 
sway. The immense mosques of Sultan Selim, of 
Soleiman the Magnificent, of St. Sophia, of Kaliph 
Ormar, and of other countries, are daily thronged 
with a multitude of enthusiastic worshippers call- 
ing upon the name of " Allah/' unaided by 
the pompous forms and cumbersome rituals of 
Latin Christianity, but in simplicity and plain- 
ness of manner. Five times every day the 
Imams, priests of Islam, ascend the tall 
minarets and lift their turbaned heads in the 
clear sky to call the faithful to prayer. "Prayer is 
better than sleep ! " rings from every minaret, until 
the sound goes around the Mohammedan world, 
girdling it with these never-ceasing vibrations, 
keeping it awake and at worship. At the sound of 
the Muezzin's call the faithful hasten to the house 
of prayer, or fall on their knees, with face turned 
to Mecca, and perform their religious duties with 
an untiring zeal. I was at Constantinople in the 
month of Ramasan, the fast month of the Turk. 
For a whole month, from early morning to the 
going down of the sun, they abstain from all food 
and drink. It is the month of pennance and peni- 
tence. The great and eloquent Moslem preachers 



36 Constantinople, or 

ascend the pulpit, and the mosques are open at all 
hours of day and night, with an endless throng 
going in and coming out. The Koran is recited, 
the Prophet's life reviewed and the virtues and 
excellencies of the faith discussed. The people per- 
form their vows, offer prayers to God and renew 
their allegiance to the Prophet. The embroidered 
curtains that hang on the gates are in perpetual 
motion by the surging tide of Mussulmen, enter- 
ing, with sandal and turban, the temples of worship. 
I was standing upon the iron bridge which con- 
nects Istambol with Pera, and all of a sudden there 
was the crash of music, the dash of arms, the shout 
of soldiers, and the rush of horses. I turned around 
and behold, a mass of gold, the most dazzling 
grandeur bearing the Sultan to the treasury 
where Mohammed's " holy coat " and other articles 
of wear, his comb, his wooden clogs, a few 
hairs from his beard and the sacred sheets on which 
his life is written, are preserved. There the Sultan, 
with all the Shahs, goes to listen reverently for 
two hours, a detailed account of the Prophet's life. 
As he comes out, faithful in his zeal for the faith, 
he is followed by the enthusiastic crowd, who follow 
his chariot wheels and shout their hearts out. The 
next day found me standing at the gate of St. 
Sophia. Alas ! what lingering memories in those 
walls, those marks of ancient date, that architecture 
of magnitude and of beauty, too. Once a Christian 
temple, built by Christian money and for Christ, 



Christ Among the Turks. 37 

now a Moslem house, with every vestige of Christi- 
anity rubbed out. Yet even now as you go in, 
such is her immensity and magnificence, that you 
exclaim " Justinian, thou art immortal in this 
temple.'' In the holy month of Ramasan, Christ- 
ians are not admitted into the Mosque during 
service time. I wore a fez and with a backsheesh 
approached one of the door-keepers, and succeeded 
to get his permission to enter in, and see Moham- 
medans at worship. Said the doorkeeper to 
me: "Be free, do not betray your nationality 
and you will be safe." Uncovering my feet, I 
walked in. Oh ! what a sight, what a transfigura- 
tion, what changes has history made. I could 
have wept when I beheld such a possession fallen 
from the grasp of Christians. Its spacious halls 
were filled with turbaned heads, white, green, red, 
and black. It was one mass of humanity praying, 
shouting, singing in a whisper, preaching and teach- 
ing. Under each column or swinging chandelier 
sat one Ulemma, surrounded with a congregation of 
hearers, sufficient to fill any of our churches on Broad 
street — listening to the expounding of the word. 
I drew quietly near to one of the preachers, and 
it was thus he ended his thrilling discourse. 
" The merciful God on this sacred spot, and in this 
holy month, pour his spirit of peace and light upon 
you." The congregation, out of their deepest heart, 
cried Amen. " The almighty God, keep you true 
and faithful to the very end." x4men, again rose 



38 Constantinople, or 

from the people's souls. "The great and only God, 
write upon your hearts the precepts of Al Koran 
and pardon you all your sins." Oh ! the thunder 
of " Amen." That raised the preacher who had been 
sitting down on a soft cushion, to his feet, and with 
one majestic gesture, that seemed to carry him far 
above his kneeling hearers, far above the white 
columns, far above the ringing dome, far above 
the oriental blue, to the throne of the eternal, he ex- 
claimed in apathetic, and eloquent voice. "Thou 
Allah! deliver these, thy children from the dark- 
ness of the world, the snares of evil men, the 
houses of shame and sin, the dens of vice, of 
drunkenness and blasphemy. Save them from the 
influence of infidel books, of false religions, and 
hear the intercessions of the Prophet Mohammed, in 
their behalf." Methought Justinian's temple shook 
from its foundation with the eloquent Amen of the 
people. Methought, never before, had this noble 
structure heard so earnest and thrilling a voice. 

In this large concourse of people, I did not see 
a single woman. One solitary creature, trembling 
under the weight of years, was kneeling on the cold, 
bare marble in the vestibule, and offering her 
prayer. 

I hastened out, and with the pure, fresh air, fell 
on my ear a musical voice coming from the 
heights. I lifted my face, and lo ! a young Mussul- 
man was chanting a sweet prayer. If my efforts 
have been a success, the translation of his prayer 



Christ Among the lurks. 39 

would be, " Thou bountiful one, thy mercy ceases 
not; my sins are great, greater is thy mercy, 
I extol thy perfections." I went home and 
thought over what I had seen and heard on 
that day of Ramasan. My heart grew sad and 
sadder still, as I saw how near, in one sense, the 
Mohammedans were to the Kingdom of Heaven, 
and yet, would not enter in. So much of truth and 
goodness, and Scripture in their religion, but the 
chief thing lacking. The Moslems believe in Jesus, 
as a Prophet of great power who lived eigh- 
teen hundred years ago, and prepared the world 
for the coming of Mohammed, the last and greatest 
of all sent from God. Islam students quote the 
Scriptures to prove the Apostleship of Mohammed. 
These words of Moses to the children of Israel, " The 
Lord, thy God, will raise up unto thee a Prophet . . 
of thy brethren " are often quoted. The brethren of 
Jacob's children were the Ishmselites, and Moham- 
med, descending from that race, is said to be a fulfil- 
ment of this prophecy. In the Septuagin translation 
of Isaiah, we read of " two riders, one on an ass and 
one on a camel." The one represents Jesus, as he 
entered Jerusalem on the ass, the other is a foresight of 
Mohammed entering Mecca on his camel. Again, in 
the new Testament, Jesus was asked by the people 
whether he was Christ Elijah, or that Prophet. Who 
is that Prophet, but Mohammed ? " I shall send you 
the Comforter ;" even these words have been inter- 
preted as being prophetic of the Arabian's birth. 



40 Constantinople, or 

The faith of Mohammed has also its dark side. It 
lacks the spirit, teaching, and glorious example of 
Jesus Christ. As a system of ethics, or of religion, it is 
cold, barren and weak. Nay, it is a source of posi- 
tive evil, by reason of its spirit of hate, per- 
secution, and bigotry. It believes in pushing 
Mohammed at the point of the bayonet. Its 
war cry is " the Koran or the sword." It puts up 
Mohammed as the ideal man. Higher, no man can 
be. Better, no man can be. The sensual, ambitious, 
blood-thirsty, fanatical soldier of Saracene birth, is 
held as the best, purest, and noblest example. It 
puts up the Koran, a book of very many good and 
devout sayings, but also, filled with fables, immor- 
alities, bad advice and fiction, as the Holy Book to 
become their law, faith, life and worship. With such 
a belief woven into the very texture of Islam, it has 
opposed education and progress, from the day 
that Kaliph Omar ordered the burning of the 
Alexandrian library, saying that " If these books 
agree with the Koran, we don't need them ; 
let them be burned ; and if they do not 
agree with the Koran, they are pernicious, and 
on that account should be burned." Wherever the 
Turk has gone with the Koran he has hindered the 
dawn of day. Wherever he has set his foot there 
he has sown the seeds of ruin. 

Under Turkish rule fertile lands have been con- 
verted into a wilderness, walled cities to a ruinous 
heap. Mohammedanism has dragged down man 



Christ Among the Turks. 41 

into the lowest vices and immoralities. Ob, that I 
could make the great number of sufferers— their 
bitter complaints, their sad groans, their broken 
hearts, their oppression and persecution under 
Moslem justice — to speak to you at this hour! 
It would fill your eyes with tears and wring sighs 
from your hearts. Let Mohammed be judged by 
his fruits ; let the civilizations he has ruined testify 
against him ; let the misery, ignorance and tyranny 
he has nursed by his spirit of intolerance be the 
argument against his claims. 

Do you want to know what Christ is doing 
among the Turks ? Will you hear what the truth, 
as it is in Jesus, has done for the Mohammedan 
people? I am ashamed to confess that in Constan- 
tinople, the great heart of Islam, the religion of the 
Risen One has made very little progress. There are 
very few or no converts from Islam in the capital. 
For sixty years the American missionary has 
preached on the classic shores of the Bosphorus, 
but, apparently, without any effect. No Moham- 
medan church has been built, no Mohammedan 
preacher has been ordained, no Mohammedan con- 
vert has been baptized. Shall we say that Christ 
has been a failure with these children of the Ara- 
bian desert ? Shall we say that the Gospel can 
avail in China, in Japan, in dark Africa, but not in 
Turkey among the Turks ? No ! Let us not lose 
faith ; let us not despair ; let us not turn our backs 
and flee from the battle-field ! 



42 Constantinople, or 

On the heights of Roumeli-Hissar, overlooking 
the castles of great Darius and the blue Bosphorus, 
stands Robert College, unfurling the Star-Spangled 
Banner in the land of the Crescent. This Ameri- 
can institution of Christian learning is verily the 
light of Asia. From its halls proceeds the invisible 
but invincible influence, moulding, shaping and 
carving the character of the whole empire. You 
cannot capture Turkey by the cannon, or by the 
force of diplomacy, but by the power of light. 
Education is the road to salvation. Robert College 
is doing more for the cause of Christ, of truth and 
of goodness, than all the powers of Europe put 
together. 

The days of Islam are numbered. Its dark and 
long night is wearing out. The heavens begin to 
gleam with Orient light. Christ the King is corn- 
ing, and superstition, ignorance, fanaticism, false- 
hood and fiction cannot stand against the sweeping 
might of light, of knowledge, of truth, and of the 
divine life? Can Mohammed resist the eloquence 
of Calvary and the almightiness of love, and the 
power and pathos of the gospel of the resurrection ? 
Come quickly, Lord Jesus, and like a full-orbed sun 
shine upon that ancient land of glorious birth, that 
once more the shores of the Bosphorus may ring 
with the song of Christendom. "All hail the power 
of Jesus' name." 



Christ Among the Turks. 43 



" There's a fount about to stream. 
There's a light about to beam. 
There's a warmth about to glow. 
There's a flower about to blow. 
There's a midnight blackness changing 

into gray. 
Men of thought and men of action 

clear the way :*' 

•• Aid the dawning tongue and pen. 
Aid it hopes of honest men. 
Aid it paper, aid it type. 
Aid it for the hour is ripe. 
And our earnest must not slacken 

into play. 
Men of thought and men of action 
clear the wav.*' 



HEART FRAGRANCE. 



" Thy sweetness hath betrayed thee, Lord, 
Dear Spirit, it is thou : 
Deeper and deeper in my heart I feel 
Thee, nestling now." 

" Dear Comforter, eternal love, 
Yes, thou will stay with me, 
If manly thought and loving ways. 
Build but a nest for thee." 



HEART FRAGRANCE. 



" Thou shall love the Lord thy God with all thy heart." 
Matt. xxii. — 37. 



The two great commandments of Christ are, love 
to God and love to man. 

We cannot love God and hate our fellow men. 
" How can we have the love of God in us and hate the 
brethren ?" This two-fold love, the one feeding on 
the other, is the fragrance of the regenerated heart. 
The heart is made to love. It is forever springing 
up within us and fastening its affections upon the 
supremely beautiful, and altogether lovely One. It 
fills and refills its little cup with love, and pours it 
upon the object of its worship — God. It is a vase 
of alabaster, full of fragrance, breaking, every time 
it comes into communion with Christ, "the beauty 
of Angel Worlds." God with the largeness of His 
heart draws all hearts to Himself. He makes 
earthly parents, who press on their bosom their 
darling children and cover their round, rosy cheeks 
with kisses of natural affection, and who will die for 
their offsprings, instinctively to look up to the Infi- 

D 



48 Heart Fragrnnce. 

nite Father and Mother, who presses all His children 
to His oceanic heart and stoops to kiss their lips, as 
the blushing morn kisses the eastern hills. When 
we are very weak, and the waves of some great sor- 
row roll over our heads, like the billows of the sea 
over the storm-battered coast, and when rayless 
gloom settles upon the soul, how we long for the 
wings of a dove to fly away, and be at rest in the 
Great Heart of God, where there is perfect calm. 
In our afflictions and bitter disappointments, when 
our eyes are tearful and our crosses heavy, how 
sweet to think of the love of God, where dwelleth 
peace and joy and light. Love of God is the anti- 
dote to sorrow. Love of God is also the inspiration 
of life. When fighting in the battle of life, pressed 
with foes on every hand, thousands falling at your 
side, sharp arrows piercing your heart, weary and 
worn, how cheering to think of God, who loves you, 
and follows you with His unslumbering eye, and 
sends His angels to minister to your wants. How 
inspirational to feel that your heart is locked in 
God's heart, and that He will be with you even to 
the end of the world. This divine love stirs the 
the depths of our soul and under its warm and pene- 
trating influence the human heart blooms into beauty 
blossoms all over and bursts into a flower of sweetest 
fragrance. 

The love of our neighbor is the offspring of our 
love of God. The one is the stem, the other is the 
flower. Our love to God grows into love for our 



Heart Fragrance. 49 

fellow-men. Religion is not complete without this. 
" Love one another as I have loved you/' is the New 
Testament Commandment. Have a pure and un- 
selfish desire to help and benefit and comfort even 
the lowest and meanest of all. The disciple of Jesus 
must not wish evil, must not be revengeful, unfor- 
giving, envious, belligerent, cruel, selfish or indiffer- 
ent to the wants of others. Even his enemies he 
must bless, and return them good for evil. This 
seems very hard, but Christianity is a religion of 
sacrifice. It costs a man to be a Christian. It costs 
a man to breathe the Divine Spirit. It costs a man 
to follow Christ. But the love of God to-us-ward, 
makes the sacrifice a privilege. Is there any virtue 
if I should love my benefactor and hate those who 
have wronged me in word and deed? Is it Christ- 
like to bless your friends and wish evil and curse 
your enemies ? We shall know that we are His dis- 
ciples if we overcome evil with good, hatred with 
love, cruelty with compassion, jealousy with gener- 
osity, slander with truth, meanness with frankness, 
hypocrisy with honesty, and the spirit of revenge 
with forgiveness. Be like the " trees that yield 
their fruit to those who throw stones at them." 
This broad Christian principle is the silver bell of 
heaven, ringing in our ears at all the hours of day — 
"but the greatest of these is charity." The Persian 
poet, Hafis, voices this same sentiment, when he 
says : 



50 Heart Fragrance. 

" Learn from yon Orient shell to love thy foe, 
And store with pearls the hand that brings thee woe. 
Flee like yon rock, from base vindictive pride, 
Imblaze with gems the wrist that tears thy side : 
Mark when yon tree rewards the stony shower 
With fruit nectarious, or the balmy flower. 
Shall man do less, than heal the smitten, or the railer bless. ' ' 

Love and goodness, the one to God, the other to 
our fellow-men, are the two cardinal doctrines of 
religion. This evening, I call your attention to the 
nature of the love which oar hearts must generate 
for " our Father in Heaven.'' 

To love God is to lift our minds and our hearts 
and our consciences and our souls in reverence and 
worship towards Him. It is to bend our minds in 
humility before His truth, our consciences before His 
justice, and our souls before His holiness It is to serve 
Him with every faculty and fibre of our manhood. It 
is the deep of humanity in us calling upon the deep 
of Divinity in God. It is the reaching of our heart 
after His sunshine. And when the fullness of God 
dwelleth in us, and all the living strings of the in- 
ward harp are in chord with the Divine will, then is 
our flower of piety in full bloom, beautiful as the 
chaste stars of heaven, and fragrant as the lilies of 
the field. 

My hearers, you will be surprised to see what 
erroneous ideas men possess concerning the nature 
of this heart-love. Years ago, people supposed 
that the " love of God" consisted in tormenting their 



Heart Fragrance. 51 

physical frames and abstaining from food and flee- 
ing from the world. The person who lived in a 
cave and suffered his nails to grow and cut himself 
with knives and wore a shirt of iron next to his 
flesh, was considered the friend of God. The the- 
ology of those days said to the people, " If you love 
God, show it by denying yourself all rest, by ban- - 
ishing sleep from your eyelids, by wearing your 
flesh thin, by carrying an iron girdle and a head- 
plate of coarse iron wire in the form of a heart, 
which will bruise you, wound you, and tear the flesh 
from your bones for Christ sake." Simeon, the Stylite, 
spent thirty and seven years of his life on the top 
of a pillar at Antioch, for the purpose of growing in 
his love for God. Others forsook their children 
their parents, and fled to the deserts, that they may be, 
alone with God. Others shut themselves up in con- 
vents, cells, nunneries and dark cloisters, that their 
hearts may expand with love of God. Others, 
again, ruined by bad usage the house of clay where 
God has lodged His spark of immortality, and clip- 
ped their spirits, disfigured and mutilated the no- 
blest in them, thinking that in this way they will 
please God and persuade Him to come down and 
dwell with them. Oh ! the crimes, the suicides, the 
blasphemies, the wrecks, in the name of love of God ; 
oh ! the atrocities, the barbarism, and the cruelties 
committed with a purpose to appease the wrath of 
God and win His friendship. All this passed in 
the name of love, in the name of sweet and tender 



52 Heart Fragrance. 

affection for the dear God. The heart, which like 
a flower opens to drink in all the sunshine of the 
heavens, then scatters its fragrance all around, was 
converted to a hollow, dumb, dry and insensitive 
sepulchre. Yet even to-day there are Christian sects 
which associate piety — the sincere love of the heart 
for God — with fasting and abstaining from food. 
It is thought that a pale countenance, a thin frame, 
a sad and sorrow-stained face, and a sickly look, 
are evidences of strong and growing spiritually. 
St. Paul is quoted to prove that the body must 
be prostrated by frequent fasting, and the soul 
thrown into a melancholy state by constant medita- 
tion upon our sins and transgressions. The 
theory is that when God beholds our suffer- 
ings He will be pleased, and seeing the lean- 
ness of our flesh will delight our spirits with fatness. 
This again, my kind hearers, is at war with the 
idea that true and vital love consists in our hallowed 
affections rising Godward and fastening themselves 
on His person, the heart, soul and conscience, 
the whole man springing up towards the Supreme 
sweetness. True fasting consists not in setting apart 
certain days and weeks for a prescribed abstinence 
from food, for the soul fasts truly when it is feeding 
on God with such enthusiasm and rapture that the 
body forgets its need of food. It is spontaneous, 
unbidden and voluntary. The strength and ecstacy 
of the spirit sustains the frail frame and imparts to 
it vitality. Mary, the sister of Martha, was so in- 



Heart Fragrance. 53 

tensely absorbed with the Master's love that she sat 
for hours at His feet, forgetting all else. I have 
read of the philosopher Newton being so profoundly 
interested in his studies that he often found no time 
to eat, did not care to eat, for he had found some- 
thing sweeter to his taste than meat and drink, and 
they took away his meals from his study just as they 
had brought them. Sometimes, when our hearts 
are swelled with a great joy, we lose appetite for 
food, we would rather dwell upon the dear object of 
our happiness, than have our minds diverted from 
it. Thus, when the adoring soul rises to the serene 
summits of devotion and spiritual communion, and 
lovingly lingers on the heights, where God is and 
where the heavens are peaceful and calm, and the 
sunshine is constant, it is then that the body fasts 
while the spirit is fed from the exhaustless breast of 
God. 

Another wrong idea, which is very prevalent, 
renders this love of God, to consist in a sentimental, 
purely emotional, and therefore superficial worship 
of God. In the discharge of my pastoral duties, I 
have found that some people think that to be reli- 
gious is to be talking and gossiping about religion all 
the time, they have an idea that if they repeat the 
name of God a dozen times during the day and call 
Him in endearing names, such as " sweet Father," 
" precious Saviour/' and " dear Jesus," and " sing 
love-songs to Him," and pray to be taken away from 
the world and placed in the arms of Jesus, and 



54 Heart Fragrance. 

shedding tears at the communion table, and picturing 
before their eyes Christ in the agony of death on the 
cross, with wounded side, and bruised brow and 
broken heart, and lament over his sufferings in 
a sentimental way, they will be loving God with 
the heart, mind and soul. In the Eastern countries 
Christians think that no one can have profound love 
for Christ, and having the means, neglect to visit 
Jerusalem, to weep over the holy sepulchre and 
make the footprints of Jesus in Judea wet with tears 
of penitence. Candles are burnt before the shrine of 
the great martyr. His picture is hung on the wall 
and in the beautiful months of summer, His tomb is 
converted to a monument of flowers. But this alone, 
is sentimentalism. It is superficial religion, religion 
of the feelings alone, of the eyes and hands, not of 
the deep, deep heart. It is not the inexhaustible fra- 
grance of soul ever ascending up to the nostrils of 
God. Conventional piety is a mere show, not the 
real thing, the words are there, the phrases are per- 
fect, the form is beautiful, but the spirit, the vital 
breath, is absent. The persons without any faith 
whatever, may manifest this kind of religion by 
using similar words and forms ; the hypocrite 
may have all the appearance of piety, by imitating 
the prayers and songs of sentimental worship ; the 
Pharisee may pass for a saint by concealing his 
true self behind the screen of emotional and shallow 
religion. This one fact has given religion a bad 
name. Ah ! say people, we know what that means ; 



Heart Fragrance. 55 

to be religious is to assume a grave sepulchral tone, 
carry about a long face, spend hours on your knees in 
long prayer, to be seen of men and become visionary, 
unpractical and sentimental. Do you wonder at the 
irreverence of the multitudes for religion ? Are you 
filled with surprise at the coarse indifference of 
men for the professions of Christians ? Remove there- 
for from religion all that is formal and conventional, 
and let it be the pure and undefiled love of the heart, 
growing into wholesome fruit and filling the world's 
lap with riches, beauty and usefulness. Bury mere 
talk, mere feeling, mere sentiment, under the waves 
of the sea. Have first the reality, the jewel, and 
then your speech will be sanctified, your feelings and 
emotions an acceptable offering unto God. 

How shall we win this prize ? How can we make 
our whole life to yield this fragrance ? I answer, by 
being busy in the cause of goodness on earth. We 
are living in an eminently active age. Science, 
trade, commerce and art, are stretching every nerve 
and employing every live matter and utilizing every 
second of time. Indolence, sloth, hesitancy, means 
failure, to stand still is to give up hope. See them 
pushing, driving, toiling and yearning for the mark 
before them. This activity adds to their interest, 
warms into life new efforts, fans into flame their de- 
sires and keeps them growing and getting deeper 
and deeper in love with the aim of their life. Thus 
it is in the Christian world. Be up and doing, em- 
ploy every talent and gift to better the little sphere 



56 Heart Fragrance. 

wherein God has placed you. Push with both hands 
and shoulders, the chariot wheel of the Kingdom of 
Heaven. Do not stop to rest, there is a heaven of 
rest for you when you have done well. There are the 
ignorant to be instructed, the poor to be helped, the 
fallen to be lifted up, the lost to be rescued, and a 
world to be pushed through greater degrees of ex- 
cellence. Do with all your might, your part, your 
duty, and you will find no time to doubt or disbe- 
lieve. But like a green and tender vine, your af- 
fections will twine closer and closer around God, 
who is the author of all that is true and just, pure 
and lovely in human life. 

I believe that an active Christian piety, loaded 
with rich fruit, is the only hope of a world. You 
who are believers "look aghast on the spectacle of a 
world's corruption." Think of the amount of sin, of 
misery, of drunkenness and of ignorance. Has 
science put an end to these crimes ? Has education 
helped man, completely to overthrow these evils? 
Has wealth accomplished the desired end ? Nay ! 
but has religion done it? Alas, for eighteen hun- 
dred years it has been preached. Christendom is 
dotted over with church and chapel, but where is 
the wickedness we have stemmed, the monster we 
have slayed, the abuse we have reformed, or the bad 
custom we have put down ? What then, is religion 
obsolete? Is God asleep ? Is Jesus dead ? Is piety 
foolish sentimentality ? Not so, Oh ! thou Eternal 
One. Not so, Great Guardian of all truth. 



Heart Fragrance. 57 

Let us do for Christy let us love God in deed and 
in truth, let us translate our confession into con- 
duct, let us practice the precepts of Christ, let our 
whole life be a prayer of faith, of truth and inspira- 
tion. In one word, let us be busy in God's vineyard 
after our Father's business as was the child Jesus, 
and like Him we will grow stronger in spirit, 
deeper in love and piety. Then will the whole 
earth and all humanity grow in a living likeness to 
God, and bud and blossom as the fragrant rose in 
His right hand. 



58 Heart Fragrance. 



PRAYER AFTER THE SERMON. 



All-together lovely one; Chief among ten thou- 
sand. Communicate unto us the pure, unsullen love 
of thy divine heart. Fill us from the endless Ocean 
of thy Being. We pray thee, cleanse our hearts of 
all other idols, of this transient world, riches that 
perish, and the passions and ambitions of the flesh, 
and reign thou God of light and love, supreme over 
all our desires. Our souls thirst for thee, thou 
living God. Our hands are stretched out to thee 
in filial love and faith, disappoint us not, laugh not 
at our folly and weakness, reject us not by reason of 
our short-comings. But take us all under the 
shelter of thy motherly wings, and feed our love and 
zeal for thy truth and in thy service, by the Holy 
Spirit. Moisten the seed sown into our hearts and 
give growth to the flower of piety, that its leaves 
may open and its ripe fruit fall into thy lap — and 
unto thy name Jehovah, God shall be ascribed all 
praise in all ages. — Amen. 



WHAT IS GOD ? 



PRAYER BEFORE THE SERMON. 



Our Father who art in heaven, thou all perfect, 
all knowing, and all righteous one : We come into 
thy presence to behold the matchless beauty of thy 
countenance, to commune with thine infinite spirit, 
to be fed from thine exhaustless breast, and to be 
made purer in heart, holier in soul, and larger in 
conscience and in mind. 

We hasten into thy house of prayer, of praise, of 
holy worship and inspiration, where thou, our 
shield and our reward art present, to bless, to heal , 
to comfort and to save. We thank thee for this day 
of rest, of joy and benediction. We thank thee for 
thy truth, so freely and magnanimously given unto 
us, to become our daily food and drink. Above 
all, we thank thee for, Jesus, the brightness of thy 
face, and source of all good. Breathe upon us his 
spirit, and kindle within us the flame of love, and 
devotion for his cause. Creator of all things, we 
thank thee for the return of Spring, and for the 
promise of Summer in the green grass, the swell- 
ing bud upon tender branches, in the sweetness 
and beauty of the flowers so generously scattered 
at our feet, and in the genial warmth of the sun, 
shaking down glorious day upon our eyes. In the 

E 



64 What is God ? 

ten thousand objects of thy power and wisdom, we 
behold the beauty of thy thought, the magnitude of 
thy being, and the wondrous love of thy heart. 
We would mingle our voices with the murmur of 
the streams, the rustle of the leaves, the singing of 
the birds, and the music of the stars, and praise God 
from whom all blessings flow. Oh ! Holy Father, 
may there be a Springtime in our spiritual life- 
May there be sunshine and Summer in the realm 
of our souls. May every seed of virtue, of piety 
and of love, be warmed into generous growth in 
our lives, filling thy lap with ripe and rich fruit. 
Deliver us from the cold chilling blasts of sin. 
Save us from the Winter of barrenness and unfruit- 
fulness. Save us from the night of doubt and dis- 
belief. Keep us forever, upon the heights where 
thou art, and where the cares and passions and 
ambitions of earth cannot disturb us in thine arms. 
Thou art the God of love. In the largeness of thy 
heart, there is room for us all. When earthly 
parents forget us, Thou Divine Goodness shall not 
forsake us, but keep us in the hollow of thy hand. 
When billows roll over us, and dark clouds float 
above us, and we are in distress, in grief and in 
affliction, underneath us shall be thy everlasting 
arms. When we fall and our hearts bleed from the 
thorns of life, and we sin against the light, and thy 
goodness, and thy love, then we shall seek thy face 
and implore thy mercy and forgiveness. Oh ! thou 
friend of the fallen, thou canst pardon, thou canst 



What is God ? G5 

heal, thou canst cleanse, thou canst save to the ut- 
most, This is Gospel glorious. May it inspire our 
hearts with great hopes, brave prophecies and noble 
virtues, making our life an acceptable offering unto 
thee. 

And shall we not pray for those who are sick, and 
in sorrow and in great grief? Come, thou burden 
bearer, into their homes and gladden their hearts 
by sweet messages from the heavens of peace, com- 
fort and strength. Wipe away the tear from sor- 
row's eye-lids, cheer the drooping heart. Shed sun- 
shine through the darkened windows, lift them up 
in thine arms of tender care, and let thy heart of 
sympathy and help beat against theirs. Every- 
where may thine uplifted countenance carry joy, 
peace, rest, light and love. 

Bless also the strangers, who are here to worship 
with us. Welcome them to thy heart and sanc- 
tuary. Grant unto them the prayer of their heart, 
and shed abroad in their lives the fullness of God. 

Hear us, now, good Lord, and answer the uttered 
and unutterable requests of our hearts, through 
Jesus, the risen, ascended, ever-living one, we ask. — 
Amen. 



WHAT IS GOD? 



" What think ye of Christ?' 1 
Matt. xxii. — 42. 



God is immeasurable. Our finite minds cannot 
contain the Infinite One. His nature, His attributes, 
are too vast for human sight. Even " imagination's 
utmost stretch in wonder dies away." Who has 
crossed the unbounded and mysterious ocean of His 
being? Who has risen to the heights where the 
Eternal dwells shrouded in the glory of His love ? 
What mortal has told us His name ? In the words 
of the Poet Young, " A God alone can comprehend 
a God." And shall we say, that because He is so 
far above the grasp of our mind, heart and soul, 
that therefore, He is'the " Great Unknowable ?" Are 
we in such starless night; in such helpless ignorance; 
in such pitiable weakness; that we cannot catch a 
glimpse of His face, smiling upon us at all the 
hours of mortal existence, or touch the skirts of His 
immensity, or even think of Him, who is " Our 
Father in Heaven?" 

Believe me, there are lines of communication be. 
tween man and his Maker. The clarified vision of 



68 What is God f 

the spirit, beholds God and adores Him as the cen- 
ter and soul of a universe throbbing with His divinity 
at every point. Says Emerson, " By some private 
door God enters into every individual." His truth 
finds our mind ; His justice our conscience ; His 
love our hearts, and His holiness our souls. In some 
way God fills this little human cup brim-full with 
His sweetness, His light and inspiration. He is a 
great God, yet He reveals Himself to the immortal 
soul of man. 

Christianity is not the worship of an indefinable 
and incomprehensible being. Were it so, then would 
our faith be a farce, our religion a mockery, and our 
profession a shame. Jesus Christ is the " brightness 
of the Father's face," and through him we know 
God. Knowing Him, we can love Him; loving Him, 
we can obey Him ; and obeying Him, we shall be 
happy forever. 

It is written that God made man after his own 
image. But man very often makes God to corres- 
pond to his likeness. We all have our ideas and 
impressions about the Divine Being, and our daily 
life is fashioned according to the loftiness and sweet- 
ness, or the meanness and hideousness of these 
thoughts. The real God is to us, precisely what we 
make Him to be. We see Him as our thoughts 
represent Him. Our life is the outside of our 
idea of God. We are happy, kind, useful, and 
forgiving, if our view of God's nature feeds 
these virtues in our life. We are grim and 



What is God? (3D 

gloomy, uncharitable and partial, if we believe this 
to be the charac er of God. He is tender hearted, 
compassionate, fatherly and gentle, or awful, re- 
vengeful, tyranical and ugly, according to our 
thoughts about Him. 

I do not mean to say that our thoughts change 
the divine nature. For if God is merciful, our 
opinion, that He is cruel will not make Him so. 
Thoughts only affect us, and become the anvil 
whereon our character is beaten and fashioned. 

The tree of thought will bear fruit after its kind. 
The idea we have of God, will become a thing. And 
when I want to know your real God, I do not go to your 
creed, or to your theology or to your church : but to 
your every day life in the counting room, the street, 
the fire-side ; and from the character of the motives 
and impulses which sway your desires, from the 
nobleness or baseness of your conduct, I form an 
idea of the God, whose name is written on your 
heart. Your thoughts are translated into actions ; 
the ideal becomes the real in your life, and your 
life the true language of your creed. 

" We live in deeds not years, in thoughts, not breaths, 

In feelings, not in figures on a dial ; 
We should count time by heart-throbs. He most lives 

Who thinks most, feels the noblest acts the best. 
And he w r hose heart beats quickest lives the longest — 

Lives in an hour more than in years do some, 
Whose fat blood sleeps as it sJips along the veins ; 

Life is but a means unto an end ; that end 
Beginning mean, and end to all things, God." 



70 What is God ? 

Let me illustrate this power cf our ideas of God in 
the formation of our character. In the dark ages the 
Christian church had an idea that God was a cruel, 
dreadful and narrow being, believing in persecution, 
and hate and fire, loving only the miserable and 
indolent hermit in his filthy cell, and frowning upon 
the toiling masses who remained in their spheres of 
battle, instead of fleeing to the desert. This was their 
notion of God. And this picture they reproduced 
in painting, in sculpture, in worship and in life. In 
Oriental churches, I have seen these ghastly repre- 
sensations filling one with horror and disgust. On 
one window is the throne of God, high in the clouds, 
while at his feet are the burning flames of hell de- 
vouring the enemies of the church. On another 
window is a devilish scene of the judgment day, 
which makes one turn pale. While yonder are 
the black and ugly demons, heaping fire upon the 
heads of the excommunicated heretics. Think of it, 
—all this in a Christian church. It was the idea 
they had of God, and tliey lived up to it. This one 
idea, that God was a cruel and vengeful being, origi- 
nated the inquisition, Spanish, Mexican and South 
American; kindled the fires of Smithfield; inaugur- 
ated themasscreof St. Bartholomew; the thirty years 
war in Germany; the slaughter of the Netherlands; 
and the cold-blooded murder of many thousands of 
honest souls, who died lingering deaths in damp, sub- 
terranean cells. Christendom ran red with human 
blood; the Christian church was one huge wound 



What is God ? 71 

from the gashes cut in it by this savage and bar- 
baric conception of the Supreme Being. They said, 
if God will burn the heretic forever in hell-fire, we 
must burn him now, for in so doing we are co- 
workers with God. If God hates the unbeliever, 
and the ones who disobey the church, we must fol- 
low His example and curse and anathematize them. 
If God will shut the door of heaven against the 
heretics, we must keep them out of our churches, 
away from our communion tables. All the disgrace- 
ful wars of the sects, the bloodshed and heartless 
atrocities of the believers, the harrowing scenes in 
dungeons and torture-chambers, had their origin in 
this inhuman and accursed idea, that the God of Hea- 
ven was a little, jealous, cruel and angry Being, 
loving a few of His friends, and hating all the rest. 
Again, there was the idea, that God hated free 
thought, and the man who did his own thinking 
and differed with the established church. So when 
John Wickliffe, a poor monk in his cell at Oxford, 
began to teach the great truths of Protestantism and 
died before the wave of persecution had reached his 
abode, the Council of Constance ordered his bones 
to be dug up and burned. What little was left 
of the Reformer in the Lutterworth churchyard, 
was burned to ashes and cast to the winds. Why 
this cruelty to the dead man's remains ? Because 
they had an idea that God, who is himself, the chief 
persecutor of such men, will hold them responsible in 
the last day, for not being God-like in their hatred 



72 What is God ? 

of the heretics. It was blasphemy to disagree with 
the church. Free thought was an unpardonable 
crime. God would punish this sin with eternal 
torment, and the followers of God ought to mani- 
fest a similar dislike for this crime and a likeness to 
God, by burning the sinner on earth. It makes my 
heart sad to think of the horrible crimes committed 
against the religion of light, life and freedom, by 
Catholics and Protestants, in the name of this anti- 
Christian idea. John Calvin was a master mind. 
John Calvin w r as a great soul. John Calvin is peerless 
in the ecclesiastical world as a man of head. But,, 
as drunkenness is the one sad spot in the life of the 
Patriarch Noah ; Debauchery, in that of Sansom ; 
Adultery, in that of King David ; Treason, in that 
of Peter ; The one black stain in Calvin's charac- 
ter was his religious bigotry. With the Papal world 
he refused the right of private judgment and in- 
dividuality of thought, which inspired the great 
movement of the Reformation. With this idea in 
his head, he became, to say the least, the cause of the 
burning of Servetus. Calvin could have saved the 
unfortunate man, but why should he? Did not 
God hate such men as Servetus ? Will he not burn 
them forever? And should a man show any pity 
and compassion when God would not ? Could Calvin 
come back to the world to-day and see Christ with the 
eyes of modern Christianity, he would hide his face in 
his hands for his cruelty against a brother-man, whose 
only fault was the free use of his faculties. Ah ! even 



What is God f 73 

had he then seen Jesus on the cross, breathing away 
His Holy Ghost in a glorious beatitude for his mur- 
derers, he would have fallen on his knees and wept 
with bitterness over his lack of charity for a frail, 
weak, mistaken creature of the Heavenly Father. 
It was not because these great theologians were 
naturally unsympathetic and cruel men. It w r as 
their idea of God and of His nature, which they 
carried out in their lives. Taking the religious 
history of the Mediaeval Ages as a test, we infer that 
the God they worshipped was an altogether different 
Being. Their God loved the barren monastic life; 
our God loves the fruitful, active life in the sphere 
wherein he has placed us. Then He said, u Believe 
or burn/' now He says, "Coine unto Me all ye that 
are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you 
rest." Then He loved the Catholic and hated the 
Protestant, or loved the Protestant and hated the 
Catholic, now 7 He says, " Ye are all brethren one of 
of another." Then He was a tyrant before whom 
men and women trembled and grew pale ; now He 
is the Father, who shall not forsake us, even when 
our earthly parents have forgotten us. God Al- 
mighty is the same immutable being, blessed for- 
ever. It is only our thoughts and ideas that have 
changed. 

Once more. There is another idea that the Sov- 
ereign Creator of the universe, the Lord of men and 
King of angels, whom the heaven of heavens can- 
not contain, who occupies all time and fills all space, 



74 What is God? 

is a petty, sectarian being, who has a choice between 
Presbyterianism and Methodism, between sprinkling 
and immersion, between written and extempore 
prayers, between the attitude of standing and 
kneeling in worship, between bishops and presby- 
ters, between ministers and priests. He is repre- 
sented as preferring one form of worship to another 
— the flowing gown to the ordinary dress, the cross- 
formed chapel to the plain house, and a great num- 
ber of other non-essential, secondary matters — which 
convey the impression that God was a little being, 
extremely one-sided in His preferences and sectarian 
to the very core of His heart. Do you know what 
this idea has done ? It has torn Christendom to a 
thousand sects. It has given birth to a multitude 
of irreconcilable schisms, all from the Bible. It has 
robbed [the Body of Christ of its unity, glory and 
strength. It has made a Babel of the Church of 
God. The greatness of God and the greatness of 
His Word are a condemnation of the sectarian 
spirit. Read the inspired writers and you will see 
how plainly and emphatically they speak of the royal 
law of love, of righteousness, of purity of heart, of 
integrity of soul, of living faith, and of charity. 
There can be but one interpretation of the passages 
in Scripture where these solid truths are revealed. 
Only one sect, as far these great revelations are con- 
cerned. But with forms and numbers and figures 
or modes of prayer, or worship, or baptism, or sacri- 
fice, a Great Bible has simply nothing to do. The 



What is God? 75 

important truths have not divided Christendom so 
much as the little, obscure and secondary matters in 
the Word. 

Once more. Coming still nearer to our times, 
we shall meet with people who will tell us of an- 
other idea about God. This represents the Divine 
Father as an unfair and imperfect being. God, 
it is thought, has provided an atonement for His 
special friends. The plan of salvation is full and 
complete, yet limited in its application. He is made 
to say to Himself, " Is not this offer of life free and 
gracious on my part and purely unmerited by my 
creatures; I will bestow it therefore 8 on whomsoever I 
will, and pass by the rest." Accordingly Jesus died 
for the whole world, but effectually only for a certain 
number. He is offered to all men, but irresistibly to 
the chosen ones. God does not draw you, in the sense 
that he draws your neighbor. He does not offer 
unto you this great salvation, as he does to the 
elect His atonement is limited. Christ's death 
only avails for the predestined. This idea of a 
limited atonement, I reject and consider it in direct 
opposition to the broad outlines of scriptural teach- 
ing. It makes God, " with whom there is no respect 
of persons," a partial and unjust judge. He provides 
no salvation for a certain number of His creatures, 
then punishes them for not accepting what was not 
offered to them in earnest. He does not make the 
same offer to all his creatures, who were brought to 
life, not by their own volition, but by a Divine 



76 What is God ? 

fiat, and then holds them accountable for not ac- 
cepting what was really and sincerely never meant 
for them. Suppose you would set a table, rich 
with food and free to all, announce it as such, 
then invite all the hungry and needy to come and 
eat and live, but refuse equal privileges to all, would 
that, humanly speaking, be just and impartial. 
Then suppose you would turn around and strike 
these men on the head for not availing themselves 
of your bounty as the more favored ones have done, 
would that be fair, kind and in accord with the 
highest justice ? Yet it is said, as Jonathan Ed- 
wards would say, as Hopkins and Emmons would 
say, " Is not God sovereign ? Can He not do just 
as He pleases? Does He lack the power and right 
to save your neighbor and condemn you ? Is it 
unfair in Him to offer His salvation to some, and 
withhold it from others ? " We answer — God 
does what is right, just, impartial and absolutely 
fair. Using the faculties He has given me, I say 
such a course would make God an extremely unfair 
being. Do you say that I, being a poor human 
creature, may be mistaken in my ideas of justice and 
fairness, then I say, I may be mistaken in my ideas 
of love and kindness. How do I know, what Di- 
vine goodness is, or what divine compassion is ? 
But if I may define these benevolent attributes in 
the Deity and be confident that in the main I am 
right, likewise I can form my ideas of divine justice 
and feel confident that what seems irrational and 



What is God? 11 

contrary to Christian consciousness is not the at- 
tribute of an absolutely and infinitely perfect God. 

Jesus Christ died for all men. For Judas Iscariot, 
in the same sense that He died for the great Apostle 
to the Gentiles. He called each one of these men, 
with equal love, sincerity and willingness to save. 
The one refused, and died; not because Christ would 
not help him as much as the other, but by reason 
of his own hardness of heart. I may be asked to 
reconcile the divine sovereignty with human free- 
dom. My answer is, I cannot. I believe in the de- 
crees of God, and I believe in a certain amount of 
freedom given to the human will. Further than 
this I cannot travel, for it is darkness and mystery. 
In preaching the gospel, I say to my people that this 
glorious gospel of the blessed God will do for you 
all that it has done for the purest spirit that ever 
drew breath. Christ is to you all that he ever was 
or will be to any other human creature. He is as 
near to your soul as he was to;the great and saintly 
martyrs, reformers and heroes. Never for a moment 
suffer yourself to doubt this. Never say to yourself 
that, perhaps you are not elected to be saved; that 
perhaps God does not love you as much and as truly 
as he loves others ; and that perhaps from eternity 
you have been predestined to be cast into the outer 
darkness. No, NO. Fling aside all such thoughts. 
Rise above all such doubts. God loves YOU. Jesus 
seeks to save you. You, yes, even you, the Infinite 
One yearns and agonizes to save. Am I asked to re- 



78 What is God? 

concile this doctrine with the theory of fore-ordination 
and fore-knowledge ? Do you tell me that I am not 
consistent? I answer, with consistency, I have 
nothing to do. I preach a free, full, gracious, glorious 
good news, and if it clashes with and seems to con- 
tradict certain theological ideas about God, I cannot 
help it. 

" I walk with bare hushed feet the ground 
Ye tread with boMness shod, 
I dare not fix with mete and bound 
The love and power of God. 

" I know not where His islands lift 
Their f ronded palms in air, 
I only know I cannot drift 
Beyond His love and care. 

" And Thou, O Lord, by Whom are seen 
All creatures as they be, 
Forgive me if too close I lean 
My human heart on thee." 

I plead with you this morning to shake off from 
your souls all these false thoughts about the dear 
God. Cast aside the horrible conception which, like 
iron, pierces the heart of tenderness. Tear from your 
bosom all these barbaric images of the infinite affec- 
tion, and learn Him through the incarnate Christ. 
Believe in your innermost and centermost heart, 
that God is love, love above all and over all. Love, 
free, generous and warm as the sunlight at noon of 
day. Love, broad, tender, and comprehensive as 
the distant blue over our heads. Love, eternal,. 



What is God f 79 

illimitable and unconditional. Believe in this with 
all your being. Say you believe in it, till you are 
filled with it. Say it, till this beautiful thought per- 
vades all your life. Say it till His all-conquering 
love has melted your heart to glad submission. Say 
it, till the love of God, glorious as the morning, has 
purged you from the stains of sin. Say it, till it 
becomes the unfailing inspiration of a gentle, meek, 
frank, reverent, true, devout and godly life. 

Believe also in His greatness. The heart of God 
is large, there is room there for all who call upon 
His name, and put forth the little arms of the soul 
to embrace Him, and grope in the dark for the hem 
of His garment. It makes no difference in what 
language, or under what form, or by what creed they 
worship Him, Orthodox or Hetrodox, Calvinist or 
Armenian; they that worship Him u in the beauty of 
holiness," are His children. He is the father of all 
men ; but they that "have not the spirit of Christ are 
none of His." 

Believe again in the absolute perfection of God . He 
cannot fail in His gracious purposes. He will see 
that all wrong is set right, and justice is done to 
every creature. He will bring good out of evil, and 
better thence again. Though the Heavens fall, not 
one iota of His truth shall perish. In wisdom, He 
is all-knowing, in power, almighty, in justice, all 
righteous. And sure of His infinite perfection, we 
can face any thing in the shape of sorrow, of dis- 
appointment, or of death. 

F 



80 What is God ? 

Fill your mind with such thoughts, feed your 
heart with ennobling and bright ideas; and your 
daily religion will be like the pure stream that de- 
scends from the tall mountains, is fed by the virgin 
snows and runs through the vast fields of humanity, 
fertilizing the soil, moistening the seed and filling 
God's lap with golden sheaves. 

" Jesus, there is no dearer name than Thine, 

Which time has blazoned on his mighty scroll ; 
No wreaths, no garlands ever did entwine 

So fair a temple of so vast a soul. 
There every Virtue set his triumph seal ; 

Wisdom conjoined with strength and radiant grace 
In a sweet copy, Heaven to reveal, 

And stamp perfection on a moral face ; 
Once on the earth wert Thou, before men.'s eyes, 
That did not half Thy beauteous brightness see ; 
Once on the earth wert Thou a living shrine, 
Wherein conjoining dwelt the good, the lovely, the Divine. " 



What is God? 81 



PRAYER AFTER THE SERMON. 



Thy name is love ! Oh, thou Eternal One ! And 
with exceeding great joy we repeat this dear name 
of thine! Thou hast the power to save to the 
utmost, and to be gracious unto all thy creatures ! 
Mightier than the tide of the Atlantic Sea is the 
omnipotence of thy love! Wider than the blue 
heavens is thy providence, hedging us in on every 
hand ! Thou art a great God, yet dost thou conde- 
scend to dwell in our humble hearts, with all thy 
glory and goodness, too ! Come and deliver us 
from fear, despondency, bondage and darkness ! 
Lead us into the glorious light of thy gospel ! Im- 
part unto us, we beseech of thee, the beauty, sweet- 
ness, freedom and holiness of thy nature, through 
Jesus, the Redeemer ! — Amen. 



RECOGNITION OF FRIENDS IN 
HEAVEN 



4t Upon the frontier of this shadowy land 

We, pilgrims of eternal sorrow, stand ; 
What realm lies forward, with its happier store, 

Of forests green and deep, 

Of valleys hushed in sleep, 
And lakes most peaceful, 'tis the land of evermore." 



" What if earth 
Be but the shadow of heaven and things therein, 
Each to other like, more than below is thought." 



PRAYER BEFORE THE SERMON. 



We lift up our eyes unto Thee, source of every 
good and every perfect gift ; once more we hasten 
into thy presence, Thou father and saviour of our 
souls ; with hearts full of gratitude and full of praise 
we surround thy throne. Thou invisible but ever 
present One, we thank Thee for thy watchful care 
over us, and for thy providence hedging us in on 
every side, delivering us from sickness and death, 
and always guiding us with Thine own eye. We 
praise and magnify thy name that Thou hast been 
so very nigh to us in all the hours of mortal exist- 
ence, in the hour of trouble and sorrow, in the hour 
of darkness and of gloom, in the hour of sickness 
and bereavement. Xhou has been our comforter, 
our friend, our help, our strength, and for all these 
unnumbered mercies we lift up our hearts in praise 
and in song, in gratitude and in love to thy throne, 
for Thou deservest all our worship and adoration. 
We confess in thy presence that we are not worthy 
to take thy holy name upon our unclean lips ; we 
are not worthy to bring offerings with our unclean 
hands ; we are not worthy to lift up the eye and be- 
hold thy face so luminous with glory and goodness; 



86 Recognition of Friends 

but in Jesus Christ, our elder brother, we approach 
to thy throxie and we present our petitions to Thee 
this morning with a firm, immovable trust that Thou 
wilt hear us and also wilt answer us. 

Oh Lord God, we pray, first of all and over all, 
for the gift of thy Holy Spirit, knowing that with- 
out the inspiration of thy Holy Ghost, we cannot 
worship Thee acceptably; we cannot render unto 
Thee service that shall praise thy name and profit 
our souls. Therefore, we pray that we may be 
guided by thy Spirit ; be taught by thy Spirit ; be 
inspired by thy Spirit, that our eyes may be opened, 
our feelings may be rendered tender, our hearts 
prepared for the precious seed of the Gospel of Jesus 
Christ. 

We pray that this morning, as we come to confess 
our sins and to ask for blessings new, we may be in 
the Spirit. Heavenly Father wilt Thou graciously 
smile upon us, forgiving our many sins and short- 
comings and filling our hearts with thy peace and 
with thy love and with thy holiness. Give us 
strength, give us courage, give us help from above, 
that in the discharge of our duties we may be faith- 
ful and brave ; that in the doing of thy will we may 
be true, that in thy service we may be useful and 
fruitful. Give us instruction from above that we 
may know what is pleasing in thy sight, what is thy 
will, and that in the doing of that will, we may be 
crowned with never withering blossoms. When 
temptation is too strong for our arms to put down ; 



in Heaven. 87 

when we are in great peril and moral danger 
send Thou an angel from above to strengthen 
us and lift us up in his arms lest we dash our feet 
against a stone. 

In the great fight of faith upon the battle-field 
for Christ may we ever see His banner unfurled over 
our heads, and listen to his inspiring words of cheer, 
and see His smile of approval and joy. In our every- 
day life, in buying and selling, in doing and pray- 
ing, in our homes and on the street, everywhere may 
God's love shine through our works and words, and 
may men be persuaded that Christianity is a power 
and a reality. 

Enable us to prove that the Cross of Christ is full 
of charm and inspiration, and that the name of 
Jesus is above every other name. May we have the 
grace to be faithful unto death, that we may hear 
the Master's " Well-done." 

Shall we not pray, Almighty God, for all thy 
children who are in affliction, in distress, and in be- 
reavement? The Lord anoint their heads with 
the oil of gladness, and fill their cups brim-full with 
His comfort. Help them to lay their burdens at 
thy feet and find rest, sweet rest, in thine arms of 
infinite affection. Grant unto us a glimpse of that 
future world of immortality and peace, that our 
drooping, sinking spirits may mount to the heights 
of spiritual vision and communion. 

Bless all the strangers who have come to worship 
with us. Let this be the house of prayer, psalm, 



88 Recognition of Friends in Heaven. 

and gospel to their souls. Welcome them, gracious 
One, to thy large and loving heart. Put thy hand 
upon them, and bless them in their souls and in 
their homes. 

Hear us, Holy Father, in these, our petitions ; an- 
swer the uttered and unutterable requests of thy 
people, and feed us from thine exhaustless breast, 
through Jesus Christ, our Lord. — Amen. 



RECOGNITION OF FRIENDS IN HEAVEN. 



" Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into 

the heart of man the thmgs which God hath prepared 

for those that love Him." 

I Cor.— 2, 9. 



Our friends are very dear to us. We carry them 
close to our thrilling hearts. What is life without 
friendship and the tender relations between husband 
and wife, between parent and child ? Put a person 
in a beautiful palace, surround him with all the 
comforts of wealth, let him have all that his heart 
desires, let him have honor and pleasure and health, 
but take away from him his loved ones — perhaps a 
little child, or a kind mother, or a faithful and 
affectionate wife — and he will be perfectly miserable 
in his magnificent mansion. Love is the soul of 
life. Ever-growing affection for our own is the free 
fire that keeps the human heart warm. Let these 
be extinguished, and what is life? Without this 
love, which shall outlast the ages, and which shall 
know no parting, life is dreary, aimless and burden- 
some. Would you care to live if you could not 
love? Could you love and not wish to love forever? 



90 Recognition of Friends 

You who are parents, would you believe for a 
moment that this fragrant flower of affection grow- 
ing out of your heart will soon wither and fade 
away without any future for its greater growth? 
Would you believe that the jewels God has set on 
your parental brow fall forever from your crown at 
death ? Would you believe that beyond the grave 
you have no friends— no darling children, no father 
or mother? I am confident every true, deep and 
noble soul in this large congregation will say, " No, 
NO, not for one moment can our hearts entertain 
such a chilling, saddening and despairing belief." 
And is there no significance in this firm, unambigu- 
ous and brave answer of the world of love ? 

This subject, my hearers, is a very delicate 
one. I know there are in my audience hearts 
that have been broken and bruised by reason of 
death in the home circle. There is a vacancy in 
your life, and nothing in the world seems to fill that 
void. You had a bird in your arms, which has 
flown away to other regions, leaving you comfortless ; 
Death, that grim visitor, put forth its icy and cruel 
hand and tore a loved one from your heart ; you 
felt the cold blast from the wings of Death fanning 
your cheeks as you sat beside the bed of the dying, 
and when the end came, and the sufferer sank into 
sleep, you asked yourself this question : " Shall we 
not meet again ?" " Will I not find, some day, 
what I have lost to-day ?" 

Oh ! that I could inspire your hearts, this morn- 



in Heaven. 91 

ing with the strong assurance that death does not 
mean everlasting seperation. The parting is only 
when the narrowband sullen stream is being crossed. 
On the other side there is re-union. In our fathers 
house we shall meet again. This belief is full of 
inspiration, solace and gladness. In that glorious 
spirit land we shall know our friends, our loved ones, 
our blossoms, and walk hand in hand with them 
through the golden streets of that larger and better 
land. This is the faith of the heart. It is its 
brightest and bravest hope. It is the longing of 
love. It is its most ardent prayer and wish. As 
we stand upon the brink of the grave, and follow 
the departed one, in imagination, to the unseen 
world, how we believe in it with all our heart. What 
power, there is in this hope to dry the reddened eyes, 
to illume the darkend tomb, to put a permanent 
lustre at the entrance of the valley of shadows, and 
. to robe the heavens with the immortal stars of 
promise and prophecy ? What charm in this faith, 
to make heaven real, eternal life a boon, and to rob 
death of its sharpest sting ? Can a belief which is 
so minutely woven into the texture of our hearts, 
so closely associated with our highest, purest and 
divinest aspirations, so intimately connected with 
our ideas of God, of heaven and of happiness, be a 
lie, a mockery, a deception, an unreal show ? Can 
it be, that our hearts deceive us ? Can it be that 
this natural and sacred instinct of the soul is a cruel 
cheat ? Can it be that this sweet hope which lights 



92 Recognition of Friends 

us to the grave is a traitor ? If these be treacherous 
guides, then the moral foundations fall from under- 
neath us. Then is our anchor torn from the shore, 
and we are at sea, amid the fog, the darkness, the 
rocks, and u false lights." " What is right." "Is God 
good," and is "truth dear?" Can we answer these 
question, if our holy instincts have organized a 
conspiracy against us ? But nay ! believe in the 
gospel of your heart. Accept the prophecies of your 
soul. Follow unhesitatingly the lead of your con- 
sciences and they will not deceive you, they will not 
disappoint you, they will not turn traitor. 

Again, the conception of heaven, as imparted to us 
by the word of God is incomplete, without the re- 
cognition of our friends. If there is no re-gathering 
and meeting again in heaven, then it is an imper- 
fect joy and an unsatisfactory rest, which is held 
before us as our succeeding great and eternal re- 
ward. Heaven means happiness, means unalloyed 
joy, means full gratification of our noblest 
desires, means growth and development of 
our affections. On this conception of heaven 
is rooted and grounded the belief in future recogni- 
tion. Could you be happy in the celestial world 
without the society of those, who on earth made 
your life cheerful and constituted your invaluable 
treasure? Would heaven be heaven, without the 
presence of familiar faces ? Could you be at home 
there, without the company and friendship and love 
of all that were nearest and dearest to you on earth ? 



in Heaven. 93 

It may be answered, that this is a human way of 
reasoning concerning the future life, and that when 
we go there we shall be so changed, that we will 
forget friendship ; forget the tender and sacred ties 
formed here below; forget all the objects of our 
best affections, and be absorbed in something else. I 
reply to this, that, if we shall cease to be men and wo- 
men in heaven, the very same beings that we were 
on earth, then our interest in heaven is lost. If the 
heart here, so sympathetic, affectionate and loving, 
there will become hard, indifferent and cold; if 
friendship, now, so sweet and so essential to my 
happiness, there will lose all its charm and power, 
surely that will be a great change; and if death 
works such a change, then we are in total ignorance 
as to what kind of creatures we shall be after death. 
But death does not work such a change upon hu- 
man nature. Death is merely the messenger of 
light and victory to the faithful in the battle, throw- 
ing open before them the palace gates of immor- 
tality and joy. There, our hearts shall be the 
same, only purer, holier, deeper in love with God. 
There our souls shall be the very same, only, the 
image of the Eternal shining brighter thereon. 
Our whole nature will be the same, only ennobled, 
redeemed from sin and sorrow, sanctified, glorified. 
Our life the same, only in a loftier and diviner 
sphere, free from the imperfections, temptations, 
accidents and shams of life, and without the lusts, 
passions, ambitions and failings of the flesh; the 



94 Recognition of Friends 

hypocrisy, deceit and hollowness of earth. I take 
heaven to be a world of infinite truth, of infinite 
goodness,^ infinite beauty, and infinite love. Into 
this state we shall enter, not like new-born souls, but 
as we are at the hour of death. And if the future 
life is a continuation of this, then in that sphere of 
activity, growth and unceasing work, how needful 
to us, the co-operation, sympathy, help and inspira- 
tion of our friends who on earth assisted us to gain 
the crown ! In that immense arena of spiritual en- 
terprise of rising, and climbing to higher heights of 
excellence, how essential is friendship, its words 
of cheer, its smile of approval, and the power and 
pathos of its love ! Death will not kill friendship. 
The grave will not destroy the social nature of man. 
Love is immortal ; and an undying love will not rest 
till the object of its affections is found. It will 
search the heavens, scan the heights and depths, 
haunt the ages, till its deep, deep thirst is satisfied. 
Accept this conception of heaven and the recogni- 
tion and society of our friends become just as essen- 
tial there as they are here. Heaven is not a mere 
singing school, where nothing else is done but chan- 
ting psalms and playing on harps, which will leave 
no time to renew the friendship of our once loved 
ones. Heaven is not an endless prayer meeting; 
where no one is allowed to talk to his neighbor, but 
where all commune in solemn silence. Heaven is 
our home, for the re-union of sundered love. Our 
home, for the full growth and development and en- 



in Heaven. 95 

largement of every faculty of the mind, every affec- 
tion of the heart and every aspiration of the soul. 
In that heavenly home. God will wipe away all tears 
from our eyes, by first of all and over all, giving 
Himself to us, and filling us with His divine sweet- 
ness. There He will re-unite the scattered family 
on earth. There He will make happiness twice 
happy by satisfying love. The mother who has 
sobbed and wept these many years, until her cheeks 
are swollen and her eyes dimmed, shall behold her 
dearest child resting sweetly upon the bosom of eter- 
nal love, safe from sickness, sorrow and sin. 

" One look sufficient to tell me they were mine; 
My babes, my blossoms, my long parted ones. 
The same in feature and in form, as when 
I bent o'er their dying pillows last." 

The revelations of the Christ encourage me to 
believe that my departed friends are still thinking 
of me, still interested in me, still love me and. pray 
for me. When the summons comes for me to join 
their ranks, will they not greet me with a come and 
welcome? Thus greeted and surrounded I shall 
feel at home in heaven. 

Did I hear you say that this is only a dream? 
If so, let it be a glorious one. But I am not specu- 
lating, not theorising, I am repeating the prophecies 
of my heart. AVhen I say man cannot live without 
bread, I am not uttering a greater truth than when 
I say man will die without love. I am just as far 



96 Recognition of Friends 

from speculating when I picture the joy and rap- 
ture of that re-union and fellowship in heaven, as 
when describing the satisfaction and gratitude of 
the thirsty traveller in a desert, when he sees a 
clear, sparkling stream, inviting him to drink deeply 
and live. If I am dreaming, it is in obedience to 
my heart; if it is a speculation, it is the creation of 
what is noblest in man. Faithfulness to my best 
thoughts, my purest love and manliest trust, assure 
me of the purpose and power of God, in his own 
wise way, to fulfill this great prophecy of the human 
heart. 

Once more. In speaking to you on this subject 
before I employed the immortality of memory as an 
argument in favor of future recognition. Let us 
reconsider this proof. Memory is indestructible ; it 
does not perish with the body. Memory knows no 
break ; it leaps over the grave ; it does not die. The 
remembering is chiefly done by the mind. It is 
there where, like a vast mansion, all our past life is 
stored. Its many halls are crowded with imagery; 
its walls echo with a thousand sounds; its ceiling 
and floor are frescoed with the numerous events 
which have taken place in our history. From its 
huge galleries look down upon us the faces that 
have cheered us and constituted the sweetness of 
earth. The mind is a world of memories. All our 
thoughts, all our whispers, all our imaginations, all 
our actions, all our relations with our fellow-men, 
leave their imperishable impress upon the walls of 



in Heaven. 97 

the soul. Nothing can wipe them out. Nothing 
can destroy these marks cut into our mental organ- 
ism. Its pages are deathless. The record it keeps 
shall be handed down from generation to genera- 
tion. Another important fact is the freedom of 
memory. We have no control over it. It is not a 
slave to the human will. By a mere act of volition 
you can neither remember or forget. Can you 
arrest the palpitations of your heart? Can you 
discontinue the circulation of your blood ? Can 
you bring to a standstill the wondrous machinery 
of thought? Are these under the control of your 
will? Nay! So is memory a free faculty, which 
cannot be held in prison at our pleasure. Ah, if we 
could only forget some things, how r happy we would 
be. If we could only bury in oblivion, hide under 
a heap of dust those sad and shameful chapters in 
our biography; if we had the power, understood the 
art of washing out those dark stains from the cham- 
bers of recollection: what would we not give in re- 
turn ? Every time you turn your eyes upon the 
past, a certain form' rises before you, a certain scene 
is spread before you, and you say to yourself; oh I if I 
could only forget, utterly forget that form, that scene, 
I would be the happiest being on earth. Impossible I 
memory works independent of your will. Your 
choice has no influence with the workings of the 
mind. The great Italian, Dante, in his immortal 
poem, speaks of a stream of water which, on one 
side was called Lethe, and on the other, Eunoe. 



98 Recognition of Friends 

This poetic stream possessed on one side, the power 
to take away the remembrance of sin and shame 
and shortcoming, while on the other shore, it pos- 
sessed the virtue of bringing back the memory of 
every kind deed and holy thought and of sweet 
experience. 

Plunged into its waves you forget the guilty past 
and from the other shore you come forth 

" Kegenerate, 
E'en as new plants renew'd with foliage new, 
Pure and made apt for mounting to the stars." 

But such a virtuous stream exists only in the 
imagination of the poet. The hard facts of life are 
that memory is an independent and impartial author, 
putting down the good as well as thebad,and holding 
up the picture before our eyes. You cannot bribe 
memory. You cannot get him to prophecy smooth 
things in your hearing. It is indestructible ; it is in- 
dependent. In all this, there is an unanswerable 
argument for future recognition. If memory shall go 
with us to the other world, and if on the " eternal 
walls all the past shall reappear," what shall hinder 
us from remembering our friends, who make up so 
much of the happiness, usefulness, quality and even 
quantity of our lives on earth ! Shall we remember 
how we were brought to Christ and to truth and vir- 
tue and forget by whom? Shall we remember the 
place where first the Divine Voice thrilled our hearts 
and stirred the depths of our souls with hunger and 



in Heaven. 99 

thirst for Him, and forget the dear friend who 
became the blessed means for such a consummation ? 
Shall we remember how we lead our darlings to the 
Good Shepherd's fold and seated them on His lap 
for a Divine benediction, and fail to recognize them 
in heaven? The heart says, it cannot be, and I 
believe in the judgment of the heart. Almighty 
God shall withdraw the curtain of the great past, 
and there shall rise before us a perfect picture of 
our life here below, the bad as well as the good, 
for we cannot forget the one and remember the 
other, but the bad shall be freely pardoned and the 
luminous veil of Christ's righteousness thrown 
upon it. While the good shall shine like solid bars 
of gold, like polished jewels in Emanuel's crown. 
If therefore memory be a fact, the recognition of our 
friends is beyond a doubt. 

In conclusion, let us turn the broad and splendid 
light of revelation on this subject. Jesus said, "I go 
to prepare a place for you, and if I go and prepare 
a place for you, I will come again and receive you 
uato myself, that where I am, there you may be 
also." Can this precious promise be fulfilled with- 
out recognition of our friends, as dwelling with 
Christ in the place prepared for us ? Again He 
promises to seat his disciples on thrones with Abra- 
ham and Isaac and Jacob, and all the prophets in 
the Kingdom of God. 

Shall we make the acquaintance of these Patri- 
archs and pass by our own ; soul of our souls, and 



100 Recognition of Friends 

part and parcel of our lives ? Again, the Saviour 
promised to feed us from His table. " Ye may eat 
and drink at my table in my Kingdom." Does not 
this present the picture of a happy brotherhood, a 
complete family dwelling together in love ? And 
can this idea be carried out without recognition ? 
Then sounds in our ears, from the sweet Heavens, 
the inspirational words of the Son of God, " In my 
Father's house are many mansions ... I go to pre- 
pare a place for you, and I will come again and 
receive you unto myself; that where I am, there 
ye may be also." Oh, is not this overwhelming 
and assuring that there, in the words of Paul, "I 
shall know, even as also I am known." In the early 
Church, there were those that sorrowed for the de- 
parted and wept bitterly, and would not be com- 
forted. St. Paul, addressing his words to them, says, 
" But I would not have you to be ignorant, brethren, 
concerning them, which are asleep, that ye sorrow 
not, even as others which have no hope. For if we 
believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, them 
also which sleep in Jesus, will God bring with him." 
Is not the direct and emphatic meaning of this pas- 
sage " re-union, fellowship, recognition?" 

What remains for us to do but to believe firmly 
that in Heaven we shall be at home with our 
children; at home with our parents; at home with 
our friends; at home with the prophets, martyrs, 
apostles, angels; at home with Jesus, who died for 



in Heaven. 101 

the whole world; at home with God; the all-satisfy- 
ing Good ? 

With such a home before us, such friendship, such 
re-union, such fellowship and happiness waiting for 
us on the other shore, we can address death and the 
grave in the manly words of Paul, and with David 
exclaim, " Oh that I had the wings of a dove, to fly 
away and be at rest." 



" When the holy angels meet us, 
As we go to join their band, 
We shall know the friends that greet us 
In that glorious spirit land. 

We shall see the same eyes shining 

On us, as in days of yore 
We shall feel the dear arms twining 

Fondly around us as before.-' 



102 Recognition of Friends in Heaven. 



PRAYER AFTER THE SERMON. 



thou who hast a father's heart, a father's feel- 
ings, a father's care and love; we look up unto thee 
for an answer to the deep desires of our hearts. For 
the precious promises of Jesus, thy son, we thank 
thee, for His revelation of the future world of peace, 
of rest and of love, we adore thy name. We believe 
in thy word. We trust in thine infinite tenderness. 
The earthly mother may forget her child, and the 
earthly father forsake his own, but thou Divine 
parent shall follow us with thine unslumbering eye. 
Oh! thou compassionate one, lift us up, and clarify our 
vision, that through the shining veils we may 
behold the exceeding great joy into which our 
beloved have entered, and where we too shall follow 
them soon. 

Comfort thy sorrowing children, wipe away their 
tears with a soft hand, and thrill their hearts with 
the great hope of a happy re-union in thy presence, 
" where there is fullness of joy." 

Dismiss us now with thy benediction, and the 
power of this immortal hope, inspired by thy word. 
— Amen. 



THE MISSION OF WOMAN. 



THE MISSION OF WOMAN. 



" c That cur daughters may he as comer stones.'' 
Psalm cxliv. — 12. 



We read in the new testament, that " there was a 
man sent by God : " but in a broader sense, every 
man and woman is sent by God. AVe are not the 
children of chance, but of Divine wisdom and pur- 
pose. Life is not aimless and meaningless, but it 
has a task to perform, and a mission to fulfill. The 
Almighty Maker created you for an end, placed 
you in a certain sphere, and will demand of you an 
account of your life. In a perfect universe, every 
thing has its mission. From the grain of sand to 
the sky-kissing hills,- capped with snow and blushing 
rose-red in the rising sun ; from the apparently in- 
significant insect crawling in the dust, to immortal 
man, "a little lower than the angels, " — the impor- 
tance and significance of the mission increase as 
you ascend in the scale of being. The thought 
that we may make our destinies, carve our charac- 
ters, and succeed to be the glorious creatures we 
were intended to be, when first the Divine breath 



108 The Mission of Woman. 

passed through our nostrils, is full of inspiration 
and power. You may commune with yourself and 
say/" Soul! thou hast been fashioned for a glorious 
purpose, for a mark loftier than the stars, a mission 
hast thou to perform in the presence of a cloud of wit- 
nesses, of God, and of Christ, looking down upon 
you from the galleries of eternity ; quit thyself like 
a man, and let a shout of triumph and congratula- 
tion arise from the vast throng that surround you." 

My object in this discourse is to discuss the 
peculiar mission of woman. Not in the spirit of 
eccentricity, neither from a wish to create a sensa- 
tion, have I chosen this theme, but simply to lay 
strong emphasis upon those tender graces and 
charming virtues which crown Christian ladyhood 
and arm her for the great mission of life. 

The endurance and triumph of what is noblest in 
our civilization, demands the careful and thorough 
development of woman, that she may become the 
corner stone in the marvellous architecture of man- 
kind, ever rising into immensity. On their soft 
shoulders should rest the huge columns of the 
human edifice. From her Amazonian breast, she 
must feed body and soul, the physical strength and 
spiritual beauty. The hand that rocks the cradle 
and leads the lambs, should also sway the sceptre 
and guide the kings. Exalt woman to her proper 
position, and society will have vigorous and healthy 
blood in its veins, she will give birth to the dearest 
principles, noblest motives and most philanthropic 



The Mission of Woman, 109 

institutions; introducing into life's arena, heroes, 
brave and true. Ripe, Christian womanhood is the 
inexhaustible source and supply of excellence and 
inspiration. Cultivated and Christian womanhood 
is the rich soil, out of which spring the roses and 
violets that bloom on our pathway; the human 
heaven, whence descends the shower and sunshine; 
the terrestrial Paradise, feeding the human bee 
with honey. Wherever woman has enjoyed the 
privileges of her sex, there civilization has taken 
long strides in the path of progress. There, 
with her white arm she has drawn the sword 
and led the human forces to the field of action. 
There, with excellence of heart, tenderness and deli- 
cacy of conscience and transcendent spirituality of 
soul, she has raised humanity from a low ebb to the 
heights. There, she has become the champion re- 
former, carrying the cause of truth, of religion, of 
freedom, of justice and of temperance close to her 
thrilling heart and supplying them with fresh sap 
from her soul. There, she has become a mountain 
spring, pouring its virgin waters through a thou- 
sand pipes and bubbling up in all the avenue s 
of sin and haunts of disease. The world owes 
great gratitude to woman, for she has made her 
breast bare against the darts and. sharp arrows of 
the enemy of home, Fatherland and God. Take 
away woman from the battle of life and all the 
efforts and aspirations of mankind fall to a lower 
octave. We lose the oil that keeps the lamp of pro- 



110 The Mission of Woman. 

gress burning so sacrificingly ; we lose the valor 
that spurns our cowardice and timidity; we lose 
sight of that soft silvery star, which in the night of 
defeat and shame, when the sky is palled in the 
dunnest smoke of hell, shines smilingly through the 
parting clouds and turns inglorious defeat into a 
stupendous triumph. How often, when the ship of 
humanity was sinking, gallant woman rushed to the 
helm and steered the bark, laden with a precious 
burden, amid the waves, rocks and false lights — to 
the haven, safe and sound ? More than the intel- 
lectual empire of Von Humboldt, the philosophic 
spirit of saintly Socrates, the far-reaching genius of 
La Place, and Liebnitz, the world owes to the hero- 
ism, patience and self-denial of woman. It is also 
a historical fact, that in countries where she is a 
slave, crushed, degraded, despised, there man too is 
a slave, poor and wretched. Barbarity, ignorance, 
darkness and despotism reign wherever woman is 
thrust out of her sphere and denied the full enjoy- 
ment of her rights. The degradation of woman 
breaks the wheels and wings of civilization and 
blows out the lamp of progress. I come from a 
country where woman is caged and imprisoned, and 
forced to wander from the cradle to the tomb with a 
mind which is a blank and a heart which is a void. 
She is scourged by an iron hand, dragged to a con- 
dition lower than the brute, and dwarfed in body 
and spirit Alas ! was she created for such servitude ? 
Was she sent simply to satisfy man's lowest and 



The Mission of Woman. Ill 

meanest passions ? Woman ! wert thou created to 
be a tool and a slave to man ? No, it cannot be. 
For hundreds of years the Ottoman Turk has lived 
on the shores of the Bosphorus, the brightest spot 
in all the earth, but because of his savage cruelty ta 
woman, and refusal of her freedom, the Turk has 
gone down, down into ruin. History will bear me 
witness, that the emancipation and elevation of wo- 
man is the harbinger of civilization, the rosy dawn 
that gilds the mountain tops with the promise of a 
handsome day. 

What a factor woman is in the affairs of man ! 
At home she has the influence to save or to destroy. 
In society, she can purify or corrupt. In the nation, 
she has the power to lift to heaven or to drag to hell. 
What an incalculable blessing to the domestic, 
social and national life, is a true, noble, Christian 
womanhood. Piety virtue, goodness, how won- 
drously fair they seem in woman's character. Not 
fairer is the blushing morning in the month of 
June, among the hills of Switzerland. Woman's 
heart was the best friend of the man of sorrows. 
Last at the cross, first at the tomb. Hopefully 
Mary outruns the bearded and broad-shouldered 
Peter, and first awakens the sleeping world, with 
her triumphant declaration, "the Lord is risen." 
The most royal thing Jesus ever said, was said of a 
woman — " She hath done what she could." 

To immortalize the memory of a woman, who had 
dropped her mite into the treasury, Jesus reared a 

H 



112 The Mission of Woman. 

a monument on the glittering pages of His gospel. 
The most glorious words that ever fell from His lips 
were uttered in the ears of a woman at His feet. 

Christianity is the great friend of woman. Mo- 
hammed cursed woman with the yokes of polygamy, 
bondage and ignorance. Buddhism and the 
Paganism of China, Japan and Africa, make a 
woman's life intolerable. The religion of Christ 
breaks her chains, frees her faculties and leads 
out the noblest in her. Christianity is a new in- 
spiration in her veins, new blood in her heart, new 
vigor and life in her soul. At the knee of Jesus, 
she learns her true mission, finds her proper sphere 
and does her share for the fulfillment of the infinite 
purpose, wherewith the universe throbs at every 
point. 

The mission of woman, in the first place, like an 
anointed priestess, — is to guard the sacred fire of 
love upon the altar of humanity. She must add 
fresh fuel to the flame that burns in the heart 
of mankind. She must be life and immortality to 
love, without which, the world would grow cold 
and freeze to death. She was made to love. A life 
of the affections is her primary mission. The uncon- 
querable in woman, which spreads over our heads a 
majestic arch fretted with golden fire, is love: in its in- 
fluence, ennobling, sweetening and purifying; in its 
strength, immeasurable. Frcm the serene heights of 
womanly love, descends the sunshine of home and 
the happiness of life. With jealous and sleepless care 



The Mission of Woman. 113 

she guards the sanctity of the home, the sacredness 
of family ties and the sweet intimacies of friendship. 
The love of woman goes further and binds faster in 
the cause of right, than the armies and navies of all 
the world. When all have failed and fallen, love 
will triumph. God has given woman this oceanic 
heart, and these growing and clinging affections, 
that she may use them, and not abuse them. It is 
infidelity in woman to fasten her affection upon 
the world and by this misuse decay her noblest 
powers. What think you is the most lovely thing 
in life, the highest object that deserves our purest 
love? — God: Is He not perfect beauty, perfect mercy, 
perfect justice, perfect holiness and perfect goodness 
too ? If God is your treasure, then is your heart 
set on Him. If He is your jewel, then your heart 
is His humble home. Ah, me ! how many fail to 
find any loveliness and beauty in Christ. Nothing 
which touches their imagination with a peculiar 
pleasure and fascination. Hence they open their 
hearts to the gaudy pleasures of the world; and sin 
against love — by not loving, the true and the good. 
Often woman is idolatrous, desiring the perishable 
things more than God. If you love dress more than 
God, think more of your apparel than of your God, 
then dress is your idol, closer to the centre of your 
heart, than God. If you think your chief end is to 
wear jewels and decorate yourself with costly and 
precious stones, and take better care of them than 
you do of your soul, then are these articles your 



114 The Mission of Woman. 

gods. As I have often said, I am not opposed to 
elegance in dress, for nothing is too good for you. 
Elegance fits woman. All the beautiful things are 
for your use; the sparkling diamond finds its home 
flashing in your hair; the pearls are for a necklace 
around your neck ; the gems of land and sea are 
for your person. Nor am I opposed to pleasure or 
gayety. I do not believe in a sour, ascetic, grim 
and gloomy life ; I do not believe in smothering the 
song upon the lips of youth and plucking the rose 
from the cheeks of beauty ; I do not believe in 
sharpening and lengthening the thorns of life — 
rather would I add to the innocent, happy laughter 
and mirth of the world. There is joy in nature, in 
the music of the streams and stars, the rustle of the 
leaves; and the ten thousand objects of creation clap 
their hands with joy. And why should the young 
heart hate happiness ? But is this the only object for 
which you were created ? Is this your crown ? To 
walk in elegant apparel and move in gay societj 7 — 
is this the sum of your life? Is there no greater 
meaning, no higher importance attached to your 
vocation and mission ? Is there no room in your 
heart for the Infinite sweetness who has taught 
thy heart to love? Woman fails in her mission 
when she fails to keep the love of God burning 
brightly in the world's heart. All the elegant 
accomplishments — culture and wealth, will not atone 
for this misuse and decay of love. 

Again, woman is a minister of religion. It is 



The Mission of Woman. 115 

given to her in an attractive and persuasive way to 
demonstrate in her life the graces and virtues of the 
Christian life. She need not be an eloquent speaker 
in order to accomplish this, or an ordained preacher 
of the Word. She need not go from house to house 
with religious tracts and Bibles to give away. All 
cannot do that. But in the discharge of her house- 
hold duties, in her intercourse with the world, and 
in her church life, let the spirit of Jesus — his meek- 
ness, gentleness, patience, forgiveness, charity, self- 
denial and piety — shine on her person and fill the 
sphere wherein she moves with a fragrance and 
sweetness, and she will render to the cause of re- 
ligion inestimable service. The silver stars do not 
shine brighter on the distant blue than these Chris- 
tian graces in a woman's life. Is she a wife, like a 
magnet let her hold the husband to her heart, to 
truth, to fidelity and love. Let her pure and spirit- 
ual life throw a halo of glory around the husband's 
earthly toil and moil. She must be that higher life, 
higher atmosphere, higher heaven of calm and 
joy, into which theliusband shall enter at the close 
of a day of care, anxiety and fatigue. Spirituality in 
woman is like the majestic heights that inspire us 
with reverence, with aspiration and love. Is she a 
mother, like the constant shining of the sun her 
example lifts them up to higher heights of excel- 
lence and clothes them with angels' garments. The 
children see that her life is a prayer ; her going out 
and coming in, a sacrament ; her work, her worship 



116 The Mission of Woman. 

of faith and love; her home, her temple of truth 
and piety. The motherliness of her heart, like a 
beautiful picture, rises before her children in after- 
life, and when everything else is forgotten, this one 
dear vision follows them " like the Madonna in a 
chapel where all the lights are out save the one that 
burns before her shrine." If there is any thing in 
the rush and push, and jarring noises of life ; in the 
din of business, the temptations of the street, the 
heat of the passions — which reminds us and leads 
us to think of God — it is the Christian mother. She 
is a revelation of the divine motherhood. She is an 
incarnation of pity, tenderness, love, and long-suffer- 
ing. By virtue of this peculiar fitness; she can be 
very successful in helping and furthering the cause 
of true and undefiled religion. Believe me, piety is 
not so beautiful in the church, in the rich court, as 
it is in woman. In her, it dwells in its fairest and 
most pleasing aspect. What is a woman, destitute 
of the virtues inspired by the Gospel? She is a 
failure, a wreck, without the possession of those 
graces whereon angels look down with emulation. 
What sadder sight is there than to see a woman 
growing with the stains and smutch of sin on her 
white raiment; sowing the wind to reap the whirl- 
wind ; suffering the misuse and decay of her affec- 
tion ; trampling the fragrant flowers of her heart 
into the dust; dashing to pieces her beautiful 
rainbow of promise, and crushing her spiritual 
self underneath the body's cruel hoofs. Can the 



The Mission of Woman. 117 

sternest man withhold his tears? Can such ruin 
and wreck fail to touch the hardest heart? 

Woman was made to live religion, and manifest 
its excellencies. She is sent to our world as an 
evangel of religion. With her beautiful feet she 
descends the mountain tops, pressing softly the 
grass ; in her mouth a green leaf, and in her heart 
sweet messages from the excellent glory. 

" The very first 
Of human life must spring from woman's breast ; 
Your first small words are taught you from her lips ; 
Your first tears quenched by her, and your last sighs 
Too often breathed out in a woman's hearing." 

Once more I call your attention to woman as the 
reformer. The power of conscience, the profound- 
ness of feeling, the strength of sympathy, and the 
tenderness of affection in woman, qualify her for 
the work of ameliorating and reforming the con- 
dition of society. She is more hopeful, more faith- 
ful, more courageous in a great enterprise than man. 
She has a keener perception of justice and mercy. 
She possesses a more sensitive and responsive heart, 
giving loud echo to the cries of suffering and sin. She 
is ever ready to help, to heal, and to hope. Give 
woman authority ; and intemperance, the curse and 
shame of drink, will be wiped out of existence in an 
instant. From the Atlantic to the Pacific, there will 
not be one den of drink. She will knock the monster 
down and put her foot on his throat. She will plunge 



118 The Mission of Woman. 

her dagger into the demon's heart, and bring happi- 
ness, health, honor and freedom to a million homes. 
Give woman power, and there shall be no more war. 
To the shame of man, let it be said, that under the 
reign of the light and spirit of Christ, war, the 
evil of evils and curse of all curses, most horrible, 
has not been exterminated. Oh ! the homes ruined, 
the flower and beauty of the country trampled 
under foot, the precious blood shed, the barbarities, 
atrocities, inhuman cruelties perpetuated in this age 
of enlightenment and Christianity. Fie on our pro- 
fessions. Fie on our manhood. Fie on our churches. 
Think you, woman would go to war or countenance 
bloodshed ? Nay ! She will spread the sails of peace, 
and adopt the platform of universal brotherhood, 
The cause of temperance, of peace, of charity to 
the poor, the sick, the fallen and the wayward, have 
no better friend, suppoiter, inspirer — than woman. 
The world has no brighter names than Florence 
Nightingale, Miss Dix, Elizabeth Fry, Sarah Martin 
and Joan of Arc, the maid of Domraimy, who under 
the soldier's armor wore the purity, gentleness and 
faith of a philanthrophist. " Half angelic, half 
heroic," 

" The whitest lily on the shield of France." 

To day all great institutions of humanity, 
hospitals, asylums, homes and associations for the 
furtherance of peace on earth, good will to man, 
draw their sustenance from woman's breast, With a 



The Mission of Woman. 119 

heavenly pity, a sweet sympathy, patient kindness, 
enduring faith and love, supreme in adversity, she 
goes to battle, and with these unconquerable 
weapons crowns her fair brow with never-withering 
blossoms. 

" Oh. fairest of creation, last and best. 
Of all God's work, creature in whom excelled, 
Whatever canto sight or thought be formed. 
Holy. Divine, good, amiable or sweet." 

What firmer foundation can the glorious edifice 
of mankind, have? Their outstretched arms hold- 
ing the crown over our heads. Their mind a casket 
of noble ideas, great and glorious thoughts, spark- 
ling like polished diamonds. Their deep heart a 
box of alabaster, pouring fragrance and sweetness 
into our lives. Their Christian and consecrated 
womanhood : the strength, beauty, andg lory of our 
civilization. Every noble virtue, every heavenly 
grace, every great reform, every benevolent institu- 
tion, every deathless idea, every honorable cause, 
shall draw inspiration and long life from woman's 
oceanic heart. She will be the friend of God, the 
helper of man, the ameliorator of the world. The 
bravest prophecies of her soul shall be fulfilled. 
Her divinest ideal shall be realized. No cause that 
hath the friendship, sympathy and love of woman, 
shall fall to the ground. Behind every great cause, 
stands woman pushing it on to triumph. 



THE UNPARDONABLE SIN 



THE UNPARDONABLE SIN 



" Shall not be forgiven." 
Matt, xii — 6. 



Is there an unpardonable sin? What is it? 
Why is it unpardonable? If you lend me your 
attention I shall endeavor to answer these three 
questions. 

The idea contained in this verse has been differ- 
ently interpreted by writers and preachers. The 
most common view makes this sin to consist in 
blasphemy against the Holy Ghost. Every other 
sin shall be forgiven ; all crime, wickedness, world- 
liness, usurpation, tyranny, and infidelity shall be 
forgiven. It has even been directly or indirectly 
preached, that, if through all your life you have 
been dishonest and mean, selfish and sensual, in 
the last hour let a tear of repentance flow from 
your eye, or a cry for help or pardon escape your 
lips, and all shall be forgiven you. Let a man who 
has lived a seventy or eighty-years' life of sin and 
shame, of hypocrisy and deceit ; on his death-bed 
pray to be forgiven ; and the few seconds of sorrow 
for sin will atone for eighty years of unrighteous- 



124 The Unpardonable Sin. 

ness and crime. On the other hand it has also been 
taught that this one sin when committed, years and 
years of repentance and prayer and faith shall not 
wipe it away. You may shed tears till they begin 
to flow in streams to the sea ; you may sit on dust 
and ashes the rest of your life; you may fast and 
convert your body to a torture chamber for your 
soul ; you may storm the skies with your sighs — 
but there is no hope ; it " shall not be forgiven unto 
men." Such has been the interpretation of this 
much disputed text. The preaching of this sin in 
this light has everywhere filled men with fear and 
with awe. Tremblingly they have sat to listen to 
the grave and gloomy descriptions of this crime 
from the Christian pulpit. The dreadful definitions 
of the unpardonable sin have driven people to the 
verge of despair and moral suicide. How many 
have been thrown into a state of melancholy medi- 
tation from the dread of falling into this pit ! It 
has ever been a topic for vehement preaching. It 
has turned the sacred desk to a smoking Sinai, in 
whose presence the people grew pale. It made the 
messengers of the " Prince of Peace" and gentle- 
ness, harbingers of the " wrath to come." Their 
preaching was like the thunder of the clouds, not 
their silver lining ; like the lightning of the sky, 
not its soft and tender blue ; the foaming roar of 
the billows, not the soothing music of the waves; 
the wild hurricane that marches with irresistible 
sweep, not the gentle breeze that descends from the 



The Unpardonable Sin. 125 

tall mountains. They preached as they believed, 
and the nature of their themes created the austere 
character of their ministry. 

" It shall not be forgiven unto men." Ah ! how 
could Jesus, the tender-hearted, the one altogether 
lovely and full of compassion, infinitely kind and for- 
giving, be the author of this declaration ? Could such 
a sentence proceed out of the mouth of the Friend of 
sinners, the great burden bearer, the large-hearted 
philanthrophist and martyr, the mightiest and 
sweetest inspirer of man ? Was it the same Jesus,who 
forsook the ninety and nine, and wandered in the wil- 
derness in quest of the one lost sheep, who healed all 
manner of diseases, and dried the bitterest tears 
from sorrow's eyelids, from whose garments' hem 
blessing and beauty descended upon the multi- 
tude, and who suspended between earth and sky, 
with his brow bruised by thorns and his side 
wounded by a spear and his heart broken by grief, 
plead for the forgiveness of His murderers; — 
who on a certain occasion opened his lips and ere 
they were closed 'again, the awful words were 
spoken? Undoubtedly, very heinous, appalling 
and black, must this blasphemy against the Holy 
Ghost be, to have wrung such words from the lips 
of tenderness and love. 

The twelfth chapter of Matthew's gospel describes 
the miracle which Jesus by supernatural power 
performed in the very presence of the Scribes and 
Pharisees. It was a miracle of compassion and 



126 Ihe Unpardonable Sin. 

generous sympathy. They brought to Him a sight- 
less and speechless man. Poor creature ! he could 
neither speak> nor see. Jesus out of kindness, 
with the sincerest of motives, spoke the word of 
might, applied the healing touch, and the miserable 
and wretched man was made whole. Into his 
opened eyes entered upon the wings of light, the 
sun, the stars, the earth and ocean, the glory and 
magnificence of the universe. The blind could 
see, the dumb could speak. Now the Jews, accord- 
ing to our narrative, were eye-witnesses, the priests 
in their long robes, the self-righteous Pharisees, the 
learned scribes, all saw in the clearest, most em- 
phatic manner, the power of the son of man 
to glorify God in the healing of the unfortunate 
man ; but instead of bowing their faces in honest 
acknowledgment of his supremacy and divinity, 
instead of honoring and worshipping the power that 
had so marvellously and unmistakably manifested 
itself, they put their hands upon their eyes, seared 
their consciences and declared in the face of the over- 
whelming argument that Jesus was an imposter, a 
false prophet, a demon, who had the forces of 
Beelzebub, the prince of devils, at his service. They 
said this, not because they believed it to be the 
truth, but knowing well it was a lie, they uttered it, 
as if it had been the truth about Jesus. For, did 
they not know, that no human being could, with- 
out power from God, perform such works. Did they 
not know, that no devil could be the author of such 



The Unpardonable Sin. 127 

an act of charity, kindness, sympathy and love ? 
Did they not know, that only a supremely good be- 
ing could have cured the sick man? Undoubtedly. 
Yet these stiff-necked, hostile Pharisees, were deter- 
mined not to believe, no matter how great the proof, 
and to lie, no matter how evident the truth, and to 
shut their eyes fast, no matter how splendid and 
bright the light. Oh, how they hated Christ, the 
righteous One, the benefactor of the common people, 
whom they despised, and gathered up their skirts, 
not to be defiled by their vulgar touch. How they 
abhorred and reviled Jesus, the true light 
that exposed their deeds of darkness and deceit. 
How they grudged and gnashed their teeth against 
Him, whose brave voice thundered in tones of doom 
against their hypocrisy and cruelty to the orphan 
and the outcast. So intense was this enmity that 
they steeled their hearts against the rays of His 
melting compassion, armed their souls with weapons 
of vengeance against His tenderest appeals, and in 
the bitterness and madness of their hate, they flung 
aside all proof and- argument and evidence of 
Christ's divinity, and blasphemed, knowing that it 
was a blasphemy, a lie, that had no excuse, a false- 
hood black as night. He, they said, is a bad man, 
the great demon is in His heart, and moved by him 
He does these works. He is not good, He is not 
kind, He is not our friend, cried they in rage, believe 
Him not, follow Him not. Depend on it, said the 
Pharisees, He is not the Sun of God, but the son of 

i 



128 The Unpardonable Sin. 

a — devil. Alas, this was the sad and awful climax 
of their shameless and dishonest rebellion against 
evidence as clear as the sun at mid of day. And when 
they persisted in their refusal to tell the truth, and 
repeatedly told a lie, they plunged their souls into 
the abyss of irredeemable disgrace, then they sold 
themselves to the devil. Jesus Christ, says to these 
Jews : " In your ignorance you may call me a Gal- 
lilean,a Nazarene and a poor carpenter. Without 
knowing, you may call me, imposter, liar, am- 
bitious ; you may spit upon me and strike me in the 
face and nail me to the tree and say all manner of 
evil against me ; but all this shall be forgiven you. 
When, however, knowing the truth, you wilfully be- 
lieve in a lie, and call light, darkness, good, evil, and 
God, devil, and you do this repeatedly, deliberately 
and knowingly — then there is no hope for you. 

" The deaf may hear the Saviour's voice, 
The fettered tongue its chain may break ; 
But the deaf of heart, the dumb by choice, 
The laggard soul that will not wake, 
The guilt that scorns to be forgiven, 
These baffle even the spells of heaven." 

Having said this much, it is no longer necessary 
to define to you the unpardonable sin. You can see 
for yourselves that it consists in wilfully, knowingly 
and repeatedly resisting the truth, and believing in 
a lie. It consists in sinning against your best 
thoughts, your noblest impulses, and the "still , small " 
but forceful and clear divine whisper in your soul. 



The Unpardonable Sin. 129 

It consists in answering no, no, no, no, to every argu- 
ment of truth, virtue, nobleness, saintliness and God. 
It consists in putting off, and putting off, an impor- 
tant duty, knowing it to be a duty. It consists in 
indulging, and indulging in sin. knowing it to be a 
sin. The unpardonableness is not in the sin, but in 
the state of mind of the sinner, brought about by a 
repetition of the same sin. In a certain sense no sin 
is unpardonable; if you repent you will be forgiven. 
Again, every sin may become unpardonable by 
being cherished, indulged in, and hugged to the 
very end. Let me illustrate this point — 

Is theft an unpardonable sin ? No. Yet, if a man 
knows stealing to be a sin, a disgrace, a crime and 
a shame, but knowingly choses to steal, and steals 
until stealing becomes a second nature to him, is it 
not then unpardonable? Is slander an unpardon- 
able sin ? No. But when a vulture fastens his teeth 
to his neighbor's character, and out of envy and re- 
venge tears it to pieces, ruins and disgraces a good 
name, and persists in his malicious murder, knowing 
that his victim is innocent, is it not then unpardon- 
able? Is hypocrisy unpardonable? Will not God 
forgive the hypocrite ? Certainly. But when a 
person, for the purpose of gain, devilishly puts on 
the garb of virtue and piety, plies a smooth tongue, 
and walks with a grim, gloomy, and sanctimonious 
face, who continues in this course, till hypocrisy ex- 
tends to the core of his heart and becomes his meat 
and drink, is it not then unpardonable ? And is there 



130 The Unpardonable Sin. 

not an answer in this explanation, to why is it 
unpardonable? 

Human character at first, is tender and malleable 
like the soft metals ; and you can put it in any shape 
you please. Gradually it assumes a fixity, a perma- 
nence, a hardness to such an extent, that to cast it 
into a new fashion becomes impossible. Like the 
tree growing out of the soil, character grows out of 
our life and becomes inflexible in the course of time. 
The process is gradual. " Vice," says an English 
writer, "is first, pleasing, then it groweth easy, then 
frequent, then habitual, then confirmed, then the 
man is impenitent, then he is obstinate, then he re- 
solves never to repent." Step by step sin becomes 
natural to us, and one day, to our great horror, we 
find ourselves bound hand and foot by the iron of 
evil habits. If through carelessness, which is at 
the bottom of all sin, you suffer these vices to grow 
into monstrous proportions, then they will hold you 
a prisoner, denying you your freedom, in spite of 
all your prayers and tears. Oh, the tyranny and 
despotism of sinful habits ! 

At Habit at first is but a silken thread, 
Pine as the light- winged gossamers that sway 
In the warm sun-beams of a summer's day ; 
A shallow streamlet rippling o'er its bed ; 
A tiny sapling, ere its roots are spread ; 
A yet unhardened thorn upon the spray ; 
A lion's whelp that hath not scented prey ; 
.V little smiling child obedient led. 



The Unpardonable Sin. 131 

Beware ! that thread may bind thee as a chain ; 

That streamlet gather to a fatal sea ; 

That sapling spread into a gnarled tree ; 

That thorn grown hard, may wound and give thee pain ; 

That playful whelp his murderous fang reveal ; 

That child, a giant, crush thee 'neath her heel." 

Can you be forgiven without forsaking your sin ? 
Can you forsake it after you have allowed it to feed 
on your heart and grow into a bosom companion ? 
Can you break a habit of thirty, forty, fifty years 
standing? Take an habitual drunkard, to whose 
palate the intoxicating drug is sweeter than the 
cool, fresh water of the mountain spring ; on whose 
cheeks burns the flush of drunkenness ; who, for 
drink, gives his hard earnings, the sweat of his brow, 
his health, honor, and soul, his home and children, 
and the wife of his early love, whose womanly heart 
he has converted to a huge wound. Can such a one 
easily tear himself from the clutches of the monster 
and repent? That young man, from the day of his 
youth, began a career of sensuality, debauchery, and 
ambition; now he is old and gray, under the sway 
of his animal appetite. No advice reached his 
heart; no voice of God or of man could move his 
frame; wilfully he walked in this path and idolized 
the pleasures of the flesh. Can he, thus joined to 
his idols, begin a new life? My hearers, is it 
likely that an old miser, who has had no other God 
but his perishable monster of three heads, gold, sil- 
ver and copper, who has ridden over his manhood 



132 The Unpardonable Sin, 

and the commandments of God to get rich ; who has 
all his life thought more of being a millionaire 
than of being a man : whose intense greed has 
elbowed out Christ from consideration, and made 
him a lover of gold more than of God: I repeat, is it 
likely that such a one, after years and years of 
slavery to the passion for gain, will say to himself, 
" I must be a different man for the rest of my life, 
and practice generosity, and charity, and piety?" 
Can he be forgiven unless he repents of his sin ; and 
is it easy to repent of a sin that has lived with you 
for so many years and growing all the time ? For 
such a person to go back step by step, and with sin- 
cere tears of repentance, wash out the stains of his 
footprints through his long life of sin and shame, 
is such a huge task, that the immense weight of it will 
drag his enfeebled moral nature down, and down, and 
down, with accelerated speed, until a deluge of 
vices drown him forever. Unpardonable, because of 
the impossibility to repent and tear your false gods 
from your heart. 

It is not because God is unwilling to pardon ; not 
because the infinite love of Christ Jesus is not suffi- 
cient ; not because the Divine heart is not large 
enough — No, no ! — but because the sinner has grown 
so to love his sins that he cannot part with them. 

Oh, that I could sink this truth deep into your 
hearts, my people ! Oh, that I could ring an alarm 
bell in the ears of those who are sinning against 
ihe light, duty and truth! Oh, that I could bring 



The Unpardonable Sin. 133 

you this evening face to face with this naked truth I 
Promise ine you will think of it, even after you have 
left this place ! Promise me you will throw open 
your soul for a divine searching! Promise God 
you will follow His lead and not suffer sin to build 
its nest in your heart. 

Before you to-night is the path of virtue, holiness 
and piety, bright with the splendid light of God's 
shining, glorious with the immortal memory of 
saints. In the name of all that is divine in you, 
I urge you to enter into this path now. But if you 
will not enter now, when will you — When? 

" There is a light cloud near the moon, 
'Tis passing now, will pass full soon, 
If by the time its vapory sail, hath ceased 
Her shaded orb to veil ; thine heart 
Within thee be not changed, 
Dark will thy doom be ; darker still 
Thine immortality of ill." 



A LECTURE ON THE TIMES. 



A LECTURE ON THE TIMES. 



SUNDAY EVENING, OCTOBER. 1884. 



It was my privilege during the past summer to 
travel upwards of 15,000 miles, going through dif- 
ferent countries and coming in close contact with 
various civilizations, at the same time enjoying the 
opportunity of now and then taking a peep into the 
numarous ecclesiastical and domestic institutions of 
Europe and the Orient. 

We are often told that this life is a prophecy, and 
that man's present clearly mirrors forth his future. 
Is not the same true of collective humanity ? The 
actual condition of mankind to-day, is the promise 
of what it shall be to-morrow. You do not think it 
a very hard matter to foretell the future of a 
young person, from the mental and moral signs he 
manifests in his youth. For what is youth but the 
superstructure of infancy; and what is manhood 
but the flower and fruit of youth ; and what is old 
age but manhood at its maximum height, and 
blossomed all over with years ? Thus it is with 
nations, thus with entire communities, and precisely 
thus with the great world. To-morrow sleeps on the 



138 A Lecture on the Times. 

bosom of to-day. The " to come " is following hard 
on the heels of the everlasting "now." As the far- 
mer, according to a certain science well understood 
among farmers, can, with precision, predict the com- 
ing harvest or famine ; and the statesman, from 
signs in the political world, the nature of the com- 
ing dynasty; and as the father, looking in the 
face of his offspring, beholds behind it the full- 
grown man ; in like manner we can take our stand 
upon the walls of the world, and with a little study 
and a little insight and farsight, read the signs of 
the times and unfold the blessings or curses they 
have in store for us. Our task this evening, how- 
ever, is with the present ; and I make haste to ask 
and answer, if I can, this one question — " What 
are the phases of our times ? " 

One thing which we see plainly everywhere, on 
either side of the Atlantic, is the rapid diffusion 
and extension of irreligion. To the traveller it 
often seems as if the w r orld had no God and hu- 
manity no religion. Especially in large and popu- 
lous towns this is the case — God banished from the 
homes of the people, from the schools, the counting- 
house, and their daily lives. The w r ord of God is 
not studied ; the churches are cold and empty ; the 
clergy have lost their hold on the masses, and the 
masses have lost all reverence for religion. This 
irreverence, one of the sad signs of our day, is 
coarse and offensive. It is disgusting to a traveller 
to be brought in contact with this vulgar, low-bred 



A Lecture on the Times. 139 

profanity of the masses. How disrespectfully this 
age speaks of the holy and reverend themes of re- 
ligion ! How it ridicules and derides the solemn 
and the sacred in life ! It looks upon piety as the 
offspring of fraud and illusion ; upon worship in 
the church or in the secret closet as a " contempti- 
ble sentimentality ;" God is a reality, but only for 
the coward and fanatic ; Jesus is a priest-invented 
myth ; all religion is a stupendous fabrication ! 
But worse than this is the practical godlessness of 
the age. It is bad to be a speculative atheist ; it is 
worse to be a practical infidel. Theoretical skepti- 
cism is injurious, but three times worse is the down- 
right, practical unbelief of the day — the unbelief 
proven by the worldly, low and sensual tenor of 
our civilization. This prevailing irreligion of our 
era is a very strange phenomena. Why should 
the multitudes of earth prefer the gospel of atheism 
to that of immortality and joy in the H. G.? But 
the sad fact remains — the irreverence and irreligious 
tendency of modern thought. 

Again, as a natural outcome of this, another 
phase of the era we live in, is the intensity of the 
secular spirit. Given a creed that scorns 
and scoffs at even pure religion; that satir- 
izes and jeers at the solemn verities of life, 
and you have a secularism which renders itself con- 
spicuous in all the affairs of man. In England and 
in America this wordly reign is in the ascend- 
ency. There seems to be one supreme wish in the 



140 A Lecture on the Times. 

Anglo-Saxon breast of to-day. " Money." The one 
cry which is heard above every other noise, is the 
loud and long cry for " mammon." In all the earth 
there is no other idol, so gorgeously robed, and so 
highly exalted and so sincerly adored and cherished 
as this " calf of gold." One thing we do more than 
the Greeks, who worshipped " Beauty," and more 
than the Romans who adored " Valor," we " bow the 
head to copper, silver and gold, a monster of three 
heads" and call them our gods. Think not that 
I am opposed to riches, think not that I object 
to opulence and wealth. Nay! I am against this 
all-absorbing lust and greed and worship of wealth, 
which it pains me to say, is the dominating spirit 
of our age. You see men pushing, toiling, driving, 
employing every atom of life, mind and limb to 
get money ; money first of all, money before man- 
hood, money before a Christian character, money 
at the sacrifice of honesty and integrity, money by 
turning God out of the heart, and money by the 
sale of their souls. I condemn this greedy avarice 
of our times. I denounce this lust which hungers 
and barks after more. I despise this devilish 
secularism, which elbows Christ out of the human 
path, drowns all the whisperings of God's spirit in 
the soul, and makes terrible havoc of the indi- 
vidual, the family the community and the church. 
But cursed and despicable as it is, alas ! this is an- 
other phase of our times. 

Once more. A third threatening characteristic 



A Lecture on the Times. 141 

of our age, is the increase of crime. The moral 
boundaries seem to have been swept away. The 
spiritual standards taken down and the great land 
marks of virtue and justice and fidelity thoroughly 
washed away by the flooding torrents of human 
sinfulness. Just see, how many horrible deeds, 
how many bloody and ghastly crimes are com- 
mitted from sunrise to sunset? How many 
peaceful homes are ruined ; how many innocent 
characters covered with shame; how many human 
spiders catching and destroying the youth of the 
land? Faithlessness in the marriage relation, 
bringing in its train a host of curses. Infidelity at 
home, maring and disfiguring human society at 
every point. Faithlessness in business, commercial 
dishonor, sending a panic through the country. A 
certain bank explodes, then a line of banks give 
way. The great chariot of human energy trembles 
and comes to a standstill. The poor lose the little 
they have, and begin to distrust and look upon 
each other with a suspicious eye. All this by 
reason of faithlessness behind the counter. All this 
the result of the feverish excitement and desire to 
be rich, and rich right away, and by means fair or 
foul. 

A bank like that on Wall Street failing, is a dis- 
grace to our country and a reproach to our churches. 
The case of the Cincinnati clergyman, Archbishop 
Purcell, who received deposits from the poor mem- 
bers of his parish, and then failed totally, leaving 



142 A Lecture on the Times. 

the poor, poorer, is an everlasting shame, an unpar- 
donable crime against faith and honesty. It is such 
a deep blackness, on the churchman's character, that 
all the holy waters of the Catholic Church cannot 
wipe it out. In the presence of all this wrong, un- 
righteousness, evil, crime and curse, one is apt to 
ask, where are the Christian churches? Where the 
thousands of ordained ministers? Where is the 
power of the Cross? Where is the transforming in- 
fluence of our Gospels ? Ah, but ours is the blame. 
We have slept in indifference, and our lack of faith 
and motive has suffered transgression to grow to 
such monstrous proportions. To-day it threatens to 
demolish our pulpits and overthrow our Bibles. 
There is dire need for us Christians to walk the 
world with downcast face and the sense of shame. 

But to Almighty God be thanks, there are also 
glorious and noble signs manifested by our age, 
and let us now speak of them. I pray you, turn 
away your eyes from the sad spectacle of the short- 
comings of our times, and look upon the bright 
promises, the brave prophecies and the achieved 
triumphs of the golden day wherein we live. Mark 
the silent, steady, sure growth of pure and undefiled 
religion. You may think that this statement is in 
conflict with my former assertion concerning the 
widespread of irreligion. But it is one of the clear- 
est and most indisputable facts, that undefiled reli- 
gion, pure and practical, has made more progress 
in Europe, than in any other period in the world's 



A Sermon on the Times. J 43 

history. Do you marvel at this statement ? What 
if men tell you that Christianity is waning, that 
Germany and France have dropped God from their 
institutions ; what if they tell you that its days are 
numbered, and is rapidly losing its hold. It is a 
lie, believe it not. That sun has never risen on a 
fairer prospect of the Christian faith than the one 
it has to-day. The vivality which enabled it to 
make glorions strides 1800 years ago, is still fresh. 
The old fires are brightly burning and the mighty 
influence moulding and carving the destinies of 
man. Listen ! I am one of those who believe that 
the world is growing better, improving every day ; 
I am one of those who believe that human nature 
on the wings of Christ is rising and brightening. 
I carry in me, this profound persuasion, that " God's 
truth" is forever gaining over error, and God's jus- 
tice over iniquity, and God's love over hate, and 
God's religion over a blasphemous infidelity. Ah! I 
have this prophetic trust. You here may betray your 
Lord, and you there may sell him for silver pieces 
like Judas; you may deny him like Peter, and turn 
traitor and coward, but what of it? The kingdom 
of righteousness in a chariot of fire, drawn by steeds 
of flame, with Jesus Emanuel as its standard bear- 
er, smoothly and gloriously glides on, with the 
Almighty God behind it, and pushing it on. We 
may all, — catching the spirit of the age, tear our 
churches down, burn our Bibles to ashes, cast before 
the winds our creeds, prove false; but what of that, 

j 



144 A Sermon on the Times. 

as the Lord God Omnipotent liveth, " not one grain 
of love, or of justice, or of goodness, or of nobleness 
shall perish.", Great God, not one ! 

Listen again, ever since Christ died there has 
been a universal growth of the Christly in the 
world. I am confident there is a thousand times 
more of Jesus to-day than when He hung on the 
cross, outside the city gates, with a spear in His 
heart, a thorn crown on His brow T , nails in His 
hands and feet and a deep sigh on His lips, " why 
hast Thou forsaken Me " To-day there are more 
successors to the Great Physician, more disciples of 
the Good Samaritan, more Marys, more consecrated 
Pauls, more brave soldiers than when Jesus entered 
Jerusalem amid the shouts of hosanna and the 
cheers of His friends. In this present era, Christ 
has more thrones, more influence, more weight than 
when He sat on the seashore with a band of Galli- 
lean fishermen about Him. Is it true that Christ is 
losing His hold on the world? Let us see. 1800 
years ago, He was persecuted, tortured and nailed to 
the cross. To-day His ignominious cross is trans- 
figured to a symbol of glory and life and the slaugh- 
tered Christ is robed with majesty and divinity. Is 
this the sign that Christ has failed in His mission ? 
One hundred years after Christ, Christianity was but 
a seed in the ground, with all the powers of earth 
determined to crush its growth. This day, like a 
mighty Amazonian river of light, it girdles this 
globe of lands. Like the great and potent tide of 



A Sermon on the Times. 145 

the Atlantic it washes every shore. Whose are the 
schools, colleges, homes, hospitals, asylums and 
benevolent organizations of the world? Whose the 
power and wealth that rule the earth? Whose the 
fleets that whiten every sea? Are these the proofs 
of the decadence of Christianity ? 

I am confident that religion will come out victo- 
rious. The existing unbelief is only a temporary 
phase of our times. It has not come to stay. Men 
can be atheists " in their studies, with their sleepers 
on/' shut from the world ; but in the great realities 
and verities of life, who can be one ? In the sub- 
lime hour of philanthropy, when you lay down 
your life for an offering to humanity in the " holy 
sanctities " of home ; in glorified moments when our 
ambition stoops to bind up a broken heart and our 
selfishness condescends to dry a tear from Sorrow's 
eyelids, — can you be an atheist ? In the heroic hour 
when we knock down and put a firm foot on Pas- 
sion's neck; in the " kingliness of conscience/' when 
we take our stand .with the minority, ready to fall 
under a " monument of darts ,; rather than deny 
the truth — tell me, in such times can one deny God ? 
Verily, verily, Conscience, Love, Honor, Devotion 
—these are never doubters. To say that Truth and 
Courage, Love and Justice are infidels, is a lie. Be- 
lieve me, the days of this infidel gospel are num- 
bered. Eternal morning shall follow the midnight 
of doubt. Look ! already the mountain-tops are 
red with its rising beams ! 



146 A Sermon on the Times. 

Once again, I invite your attention to another of 
the most pleasing phases of our times. It is the 
generous toleration and liberality and breadth of 
opinion in matters of religion. It is an eminently 
Christian duty to be charitable and broad in our 
views, Bigotry, narrow-mindedness, exclusiveness, 
are not in accord with the universality of the Gospel. 
Years ago men thought that their church was the 
true church, and that there was no truth elsewhere. 
Every other sect was of the devil, every other creed 
heretical, every other brother not a member of the 
true church, was lost. This was the spirit of the 
mediaeval times — the spirit of the days ' of 
persecution, faggot, thumbscrew, iron and dun- 
geon. This sectarian spirit, which still lingers 
in some quarters is a relic of barbarism and bigotry. 
I abhor it. I detest it. I shall vow to do my ut- 
most to pull down these partition walls, and let men 
shake hands and exchange words of fellowship. 
I would like to minister in a church where all the 
denominations could feel at home and worship with 
freedom, and sit with me at the Lord's table and for- 
get all the non-essential differences of opinion. I 
make it my business when I am preaching to make 
people forget that they are Presbyterians, or Baptists, 
or Methodists, but remember that they are Christians. 
I say to all, let there be no strife, for we be brethren, 
members of one another. I aim to persuade my 
hearers that Cristianity is not simply a creed, not 
an organization, not a collection of isms. Christi- 



A Sermon on the Times. 147 

anity is the Spirit of Christ living in our lives. 
Once, when one differed from another in belief, the 
strong burned the weak. Now, no man is led to the 
stake because of his views. Perfect freedom of faith, 
of private judgment and a diffusion of Christian char- 
ity mark the spirit of our day in comparison with the 
past. Of course the Golden Age has not yet come. 
Still, here and there, we hear discordant notes. But 
these seekers of discord grow fewer every year. Our 
age is casting aside small ideas, is separating the in- 
cidental from the essential and waking up a brother- 
hood that has for its central figure and idea, one 
Christ, and for its temple, — righteousness. Out of 
the grave men will not rise, Catholic or Protestants, 
Calvinists or Wesleyans. Nay, but as Christians and 
children of the same Father. There is only one 
heaven, only one paradise. Let sectarian ministers 
quarrel about differences of vestment, or baptism, 
and widen the chasm. Let narrow and bigoted 
Christians buiid greater walls of partition. Let 
little minds and little hearts and mean souls, cast 
out the larger hearts and greater souls. The doom 
of sectarian bigotry is at hand. Its days are num- 
bered. The tide of Christian charity is rising, and 
will soon sweep away all the barriers, and create 
one vast, boundless sea, for the great ship of hu- 
manity with its precious load of souls, to sail safely 
to the haven of rest. 

Shall we have no part in this stupendous victory 
of right over wrong, of religion, over irreligion, of 



148 A Sermon on the Times. 

goodness, over meanness, of charity, over bigotry, of 
freedom of conscience, over the tyranny and despot- 
ism of faith ? > Can we not bravely and hopefully 
throw all the weight of our influence, example, 
prayers and life on the side of Christ, who is the. 
representative of " whatsoever things are true, what- 
soever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, 
whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are 
lovely, whatsoever things are of good report ?" Is 
there no heart that will fight to the very end, to 
maintain the purity of love? No conscience that 
will protect justice against all attacks? No mind 
that will adhere to the truth of God in the midst of 
doubt and denial ? No soul that will make its 
bosom bare to defend our holy faith at any cost? 
Who are the valiant among you? Who of great 
faith in this large assembly ? Who of strong will and 
invincible determination and moral courage? — let 
them come forth and join the brave band headed by 
the martyr Christ, and armed with love, truth, kind- 
ness and faith, — they shall win the world from 
unbelief, secularism and sin, to holiness, goodness, 
and God. 

Be of good cheer, my hearers, the tree of Christi- 
anity is growing fast. Its great roots are deeply set 
in the human soil. Its towering and ever fruitful 
branches are reaching up to Heaven, and not one 
leaf thereof shall fall to the ground. In the great bat- 
tle of truth against error, " each one of us is a soldier 
placed in his own spot by the Commander-in-chief. 



A Sermon on the Times. 149 

We know nothing of the plan of the whole cam- 
paign. That is not submitted to us ; that is arranged 
by the Supreme Power. It is for us to stand where 
we are, shoulder to shoulder, with this man to the 
right and with that man to the left, never flinching, 
doing our part, peering through the smoke of bat- 
tle, taking our share of the buffets and of the 
wounds, uncomplainingly until our particular fight 
is done." And the assurance that God will win, and 
truth will triumph, and virtue will reign, shall 
nerve our souls and thrill our hearts. On to the 
fight ; God is the banner bearer, and it will never 
touch the ground. 



IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 



PRAYER BEFORE THE SERMON. 



Almighty God, our Father in Heaven ! We come 
into Thy presence this evening to offer our evening 
sacrifice and psalm of praise and gratitude. Once 
again, we have gathered in this place to dwell upon 
the theme of Thy love and goodness towards us. 
This is the house of prayer, of inspiration and of 
communion with Thine Infinite Spirit. This is the 
day of gladness and rejoicing, of resurrection and 
ascension. In Thy Word is the power to make our 
hearts glad, to raise us from slumber and sin, and 
to lift us to the heights, w T here there is peace, joy, 
light and life. 

We thank Thee, our Father, for Thy Gospel. 
It is full of consolation, of wisdom, of instruction, 
and of inspiration/ It moves and touches the main- 
springs of our souls. It stirs the depths of our 
hearts. It can transfigure and transform our 
nature. It makes us new creatures in Christ Jesus. 

We thank Thee for Thy son, Jesus Christ, the life 
of the world, the light of men. Thou didst send 
Him to this world to live for us and die in our 
stead on the cross. We thank Thee for the heroism 
of His soul, the purity of His heart, the benevolence 



156 Immortality of the Soul. 

of His life, and the sweetness and charm of His 
example. He is our righteousness, our hope of 
immortality, our anchor in the period of peril, and 
the rock underneath us in the day of danger. His 
riven side shelters our guilty souls. His pierced 
hand shields our lives from Satan's darts. His 
broken and wounded heart is our home. For such 
a Christ, we render unto Thee our deepest gratitude. 
Write His name upon our hearts. Breathe His 
spirit into our lives. Let Jesus Christ be our argu- 
ment against doubt, our armor for the battle, and 
our comforter against the sorrows and disappoint- 
ments of life. 

Wilt thou put Thy hand upon our heads and 
bless us all in large measures. Wherein we are 
weak, make us strong; wherein we are timid and 
fearless, grant unto us moral courage and gallantry 
of spirit; wherein we are cold, careless and worldly, 
kindle within us the flame of love, devotion and 
sacrifice. 

Oh ! thou compassionate One, lift up the veil of 
thy face that we may catch a glimpse of thy beauty, 
glory and goodness. Draw us up to thy self and feed 
us from the unsearchable depths of thy kindness. May 
we realize, that thou art a just God, that thou hatest 
sin, that thou wilt punish the violation of thy holy 
law, written upon every fibre of our souls. May we 
realize that sin is an abomination in thy sight, a 
cursed thing. Inspire us with the love of holiness.. 
Show unto us the beauty of holiness. Win our affec 



Immortality of the Soul. 157 

tions to everything that is Christly and well pleasing 
in thy sight. 

Be with us at this hour. Fill this house with thy 
goodness and forgiveness. Give large replies to our 
supplications at thy throne. 

Bless and help the young to begin early in the 
Christian life. Defend them, guide and guard 
them, and give them the victory over the world. 
Let their hearts be consecrated to thy service. 

Remember in tenderness, the little ones in this 
flock, lift them up in thine arms of care and sympa- 
thy. Lead them, gentle Jesus, and when they are 
weary, carry them in thy bosom of unfailing 
affection. 

Shall we not pray for all the sick, the afflicted, 

the mourning? Send unto them thine angel, to 

lift them up in His arms and wipe the tear from 

their eyes. Put a new song upon their lips, and a 

. greater, braver hope in their souls. 

Bless the strangers who have come to worship 
with us. Thou hast brought them hither. "Wel- 
come them to thy fatherly heart and make them 
feel at home with God, in thy sanctuary. 

Hear us, thou Holy Father, pardon our sins and 
shortcomings, and fill us brimful with thy Self. 
Through Jesus our Lord we pray. — Amen. 



IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 



" If a man die. shall he live again ?" 
Job xiv, 



I hasten to discuss the theme of the soul's im- 
mortality. This is one of the practical questions, 
for it is ever active in human thought. There is in 
man the inborn thirst and longing to know some- 
thing definite of the future life. We struggle to 
catch a glimpse of the invisible world, far, far away. 
On either hand is an eternity ; the mysterious past 
and the unexplored future. Standing between these 
two cold, grim and voiceless peaks, we strive to look 
beyond the heights.- 

" Between two worlds life glitters like a star 
'Twixt night and morn npon the horizon's verge, 
How little do we know that which we are ; 
How less what we may be. 

In this earnest and deep desire to know the here- 
after, our hearts are always repeating the words of 
Job : " If a man die, shall he live again ? " 

Death is the great inevitable. Thousands to 
thousands added are dying every day. Something 

K 



160 Immortality of the Soul 

in the dark draws their foreheads earthward, and 
they die. Ah ! we shall all die. There is a day- 
fast approaching, in the which, we too, shall bid 
farewell to this earth, farewell to our loved ones, 
farewell to all our hopes, aspirations and dreams, and 
descend into the gloom of the tomb — cheerless, ray- 
less and silent. But when we are dead, shall we 
live again ? When gathering darkness has shut us 
in the chambers of death, shall there be a resurrec- 
tion morn, warming into new life our sacred dust? 
When night, midnight, has descended upon our 
noon, shall there be angels, in raiment white, wait- 
ing on the golden shores, and beckoning us to 
mount on their wings and fly away and be at rest ? 
When these eyes have grown dim, these lips locked 
in death, and this palpitating heart is still — shall 
our immortality begin ? Tell me ; when this earth 
fades away, and grows fainter and fainter in the dis- 
tance, and the last pulse beats — will Heaven's fair 
landscape, brighter than the sun, burst upon our 
vision? The mother, with sleepless patience, sits 
beside the bed of her dying son. He is all she had 
in this world, her support, joy and treasure ; she 
sees his face growing pale, his eyes gazing into a 
vacuum, and the little flickering flame sinking into 
eternal rest. Bending over her dying son, her heart 
speaks : " tell me, my child, ' if a man die, shall he 
live again?'" 

Are we not all, gentlemen and ladies, profoundly 
interested in this discussion ? We hold the breath 



Immortality of the Soul, 161 

of our breasts to gather all the whispers that contain 
a revelation of the future. We fix an ardent gaze 
upon the heavens for a sign, a token, a prophecy 
of immortality. But we are told that this deep 
thirst of the soul cannot be satisfied. In vain we 
pray and search for light. You lift your voice and 
weep bitter tears, when a particle of your soul is 
torn from you and cast into the grave, but there is 
no one to transfigure those tear-drops into tele- 
scopes, revealing the exceeding joy into which the 
departed has entered. You look into the grave, but 
there seems to be no door that opens into the eternal 
world of life. In the night of death, you raise your 
reddened eyes heavenward, but no star greets your 
vission ; no soft tread of angels' feet, bringing the 
tidings of immortality. Annihilation is the goal 
of humanity. Eternal slumber under the sod, the 
destinj 7 of the race. Death is a plunge into the 
abyss of oblivion. To die is to cease to be. Such 
is the gospel of atheism, throwing a dark shadow 
across the tenderest heart, blowing out the taper 
of the soul, and trampling in the dust the sweet 
flower of eternal hope. No ! XO ! we cannot love 
death ; we long for life. 

" 'Tis life, whereof our newer are scant, 
Oh ! life, not death for which we pant, 
More life and fuller that I want." 

It is in the structure of our souls to believe in 
immortality. Instinctively we widen the horizon 



162 Immortality of the Soul. 

of our sight, so as to sweep in, God and immortality. 
All the works of creation, we resolve into a universal 
proof of eternal life. In the green blade of grass, 
holding the jeweled dew-drop in its cup ; in the un- 
folding flower springing towards the sunshine ; in 
the leaves of the rocks ; in the fossils and shells of the 
sea; the stars and spheres of the sky — everywhere, 
we read in large letters the promise and prophecy 
of man's glorious to-come. Our desire for im- 
mortality is omnipotent ; it overcomes every objec- 
tion, answers every argument and never doubts. 

If you kindly follow me with your attention, I 
will repeat a few of my arguments for a personal be- 
lief in immortality. I do not say, these arguments 
are conclusive, or that they will carry conviction to 
every heart, but they may help strengthen and de- 
velope the existing faith in the deathlessness of the 
individual soul. It is the immortality of man, not 
of mankind, which I seek to prove. There are men, 
who believe that humanity is immortal, though the 
individual shall perish. I believe in the immor- 
tality of the individual. 

Let us begin with the historical argument. 
Almost all the principal and leading thinkers 
of the world, have given their vote for immor- 
tality. From the earliest dawn of life, this faith 
had a place in the human heart. At every stage 
of man's history, if some one could poll the world 
and record the a ayes" and " nays," nine hundred 
and ninety-nine out of every thousand would give 



Immortality of the Soul. 163 

their vote for immortality. To a certain extent, 
this proves the universality of the belief. To say 
the least, it is human to believe in the doctrine 
of immortality. The philosopher and saint Soc- 
rates, thousands of years ago, when cast into a 
dungeon, spent the twenty-nine days of his im- 
prisonment in discoursing to his disciples on the 
excellencies of truth. On the last day, the thirtieth^ 
he spoke to them on the immortality of the soul. 
Holding in his hand the chalice of death and 
pressing it to his lips, he looked in the face of death 
and decay, and in that Christless age exclaimed : — 
"I shall soon be in the company of the good." 
Plato, with his intellectual empire, thought it not 
unreasonable to believe in the same, and cherish 
this divine hope. " What we call the soul lives/' 
wrote this immortal mind. Plutarch, Seneca, the 
Emperor Antoninus and the Orator Cicero, utter in 
unambiguous terms, their firm faith in a future 
existence. In his treatise on " Old Age," Cicero 
has written these words — "Oh! for the delightful 
morning when I shall be in the celestial assembly 
of the Gods." Come nearer to our day, and a 
mighty number of master-minds will stand forth 
and give their testimony in the affirmative. Bacon 
and Franklin, Emerson and Spinosa, Emanuel Kant 
and Stuart Mill, and a host of others, not members 
of evangelical Christianity, yet believers in immor- 
tality. The noblest and truest of mankind in every 



164 Immortality of the Soul. 

age and clime, as well as the lowest and meanest, — 
the nakedness of the most barbaric included, love 
and cherish .this dear belief. 

'- Whence this pleasing hope, this fond desire, 
This longing after immortality ? 
Or whence this secret dread and inward horror, 
Of falling into nought ? why shrinks the soul 
Back on herself, and startles at destruction ? 
'Tis the divinity that stirs within us ; 
'Tis heaven itself that points out an hereafter. 
And intimates eternity to man." 

My second argument is the testimony of nature. 
Just at present, we are in mid-winter. The law of 
decay and destruction is forcibly at work. The 
ground underneath us is cold and fruitless; the 
sky is melancholy and gray ; the trees are dry and 
naked, their bare, frozen branches rattle drearily in 
the air; the lovely flowers have withered and faded 
away ; life, vigorous, handsome life, seems to have 
fled forever from nature's bosom. But we know that 
there is a warm spring-time coming, when life shall 
return to nature's veins and revive the sleeping 
woods with the invigorating breath of Summer. 
Death and life, decay and resurrection are natural 
phenomena, and are they without any significance? 
If there is a power in matter to raise rich and 
golden corn out of the rotten seed in the dust, and 
preserve a million germs under the cold Winter snow, 
and translate the refuse and black soil of the fields 
into lilies and roses, and violets, and daisies, and to 



Immortality of the Soul. 165 

re-clothe the icy, frozen, dead branches with new 
green blossom and fruit at each returning harvest, 
if there is such power in nature, ever at work, is it 
unreasonable to believe that by some such method, 
by a similar law in the realm of spirit, when this 
earthly tabernacle is dissolved, and these walls of 
flesh have succumbed, we shall have a "building of 
God, an house not made with hands, eternal in the 
heavens." Can it be deemed unscientific, unphilos- 
ophical to argue, that as in the case of natural life, 
so in that of spiritual life, a resurrection to a new 
creation will take place in the hour of death? To 
die is to rise. Death does not not mean going down, 
descending into hades, but rising up, soaring to 
loftier realms and living in new fashion. Even as 
Summer is born on the bosom of Winter, and beau- 
tiful life in the arms of decay, so shall immortality 
spring up out of our mortality, and we shall be born 
out of the perishable body into the eternal spirit. 
I do not say these are mathematical demonstations, 
leaving no room for doubt, I only ask if such rea- 
soning is contrary to physical law and the phenom- 
ena of natural life ? 

Let us rise a step higher, and we shall 
see that the faith in immortality, belonging 
to the structure of our soul, is the indis- 
pensible inspiration of life. Tear this belief 
from the human bosom, and what can fill the void 
or bridge the chasm? Let us for a moment force 
ourselves to believe that life is a dream, immortality 



1G6 Immortality of the Soul. 

a lie, and that we are mere bubbles floating aim- 
lessly on the air of existence, soon to burst into 
nothingness ; make yourself to believe that starless 
night is before you, wherein you shall perish utterly; 
and that your life is not more than the grass of 
the field or the creeping insects of land and sea ! 
Believe in this creed of annihilation with all your 
heart. Believe in it as you believe in the certainty 
of your birth, and what inspiration is left to make 
our lives heroic, noble and divine ? It takes great 
ideas, great thoughts, great aims and great beliefs 
to inspire man. Immortality, eternal duration in 
a larger, better, holier world, and with nobler 
powers, thrills the heart of man with the best 
of everything. Annihilation is repulsive, chilling^ 
— it unnerves us and puts out the celestial fire of 
our sou] s. If I am to perish to-morrow and be like 
the unconscious dust under my feet, where, then, is 
the motive to love? Why clasp my fair blossoms to 
my heart and fasten, one by one, my purest affec- 
tions on them, when it is only for a brief period, 
and then lover and loved shall sink into endless 
sleep and be trodden under the feet of future gene- 
rations? Love, the sweetest flower of the heart, 
loses its divineness and charm when it becomes 
cognizant of its own mortality. But love will not 
believe in annihilation ; it cannot. Argue with it 
philosophize with it, threaten it — it is all in vain. 
Love will hope, will aspire, will believe. Immor- 
tality is its food and drink. Then take the other 



Immortality of the Soul 16/ 

offsprings of the human mind, conscience, heart, 
and soul. Is not immortality the inspiration of all 
truth, justice, heroism, self-denial and piety ? Why 
cultivate these virtues in the garden of my life if 
to-morrow a cruel, cold blast shall sweep them all 
out of existence, tear them by the root and scatter 
them to the four winds ? Can I love justice, knowing 
that, imperfect as it is in this life, it will never have a 
chance to reach perfection ? Can I love moral heroism 
if there is no heaven, where it shall be crowned on 
the forehead with the ''well done''" of the Master? 
Can I have the heart to fight for the truth, knowing 
that there is no Almighty God standing behind 
it and pushing it on'? Can I fall in love with 
goodness and philanthrophy, and purity if they 
cannot make me God-like, and prepare me for His 
enjoyment forever? Tell me, are these sublime and 
supreme attributes of man perishable as the worm 
of the dust and transient as the 

' : Snow-fall in the river : 
A moment white, then melts forever.'* 

Is there no future for their greater growth and 
enlargement? No higher sphere where these shall 
ripen and glow with perfect beauty on our fore- 
heads ? Then, something within me breaks, my soar- 
ing spirit, aspiring energies, fall to the ground, and 
the stars that light me to the tomb, sink in a sea of 
despondency. I cannot help it, but I lose all inspi- 
ration. "What follv to try and vindicate the truth ; 



168 Immortality of the Soul. 

set the wrong, right; see that justice is done to all ; 
care for the coming mankind, and suffer for the 
welfare of others; when all is a girl's dream, a deceit- 
ful show, a chaos, rudderless, and lawless ! Let me 
look after my own body, feed my animal appetite, 
spurn my passions, and trample upon everybody 
else, for my own happiness. Is not the body all I 
have? Is not this the only world? Then " eat, 
drink, and be merry, for to-morrow we are not." Such 
will be the inevitable influence of a creed that says: 
"This is a world without a God, a body without a soul, 
a here without a hereafter." Believe in this with all 
your might, and it will bear fruit after its kind" 

On the other hand, if I am to outlive the ages, 
and dwell in the presence of light forever, then is 
life full of meaning and inspiration, too. I love the 
good, the true, the divine, for the eternal years of 
God are theirs. They are imperishable and ever 
rising to nobler heights. Not one seed of goodness 
shall rot in the soil ; not one particle of. truth shall 
be lost in the hurry and confusion of ages ; and not 
one jewel from the diadem of man shall fall to the 
ground. In the period of ambition, I shall think 
of that higher prize, and thus resist evil. In the 
hour of passion, I shall think of Heaven, the home 
of the pure in heart, and overcome the animal ap- 
petites. When tempted by greed and selfishness, I 
will think of the blessed hereafter, and deny myself 
for others. With this firm faith, I shall face every- 
thing in the shape of sorrow, temptation, disap- 



Immortality of the Soul. 169 

pointinent or death. Immortality is the living sap 
running through the veins of what is noblest and 
divine in man. May we not say, that in all this, 
there is an argument for immortality ? Our hearts 
answer " Yes.'' Eternal life is the gift of God. 
Annihilation, gentlemen and ladies, is a lie. 

Once more. The infinite perfection of God is an 
unanswerable proof in favor of immortality. By 
this we mean, that God in all His attributes. 
purposes and decrees is absolutely perfect. Imper- 
fection, absolute evil, cannot exist in the Universe 
of a perfect Creator. And would a God, who is 
perfect power, perfect wisdom, perfect love, create 
man, endow him with supernatural capacities, give 
him a mind capable of immense growth, a heart 
never weary of love, a soul ever springing toward 
God and heaven ; and then totally wipe him out 
in the twinkling of an eye? Can you believe 
of a perfect father giving birth to children, feeding 
them from His breast, bringing them up to man- 
hood and womanhood, and then digging graves to 
thrust them back hi to nothingness? What mock- 
ery ! Could an infinitely perfect Being create in 
our souls the thirst, the longing, the craving for 
more life, and then turn around and deceive us? 
It cannot be ! Can you worship Him. who makes 
man, puts him in a world of sin, trial, sorrow, 
disappointment, heavy burdens, crosses, tears and 
thorns, and prepares no future, where all this shall 
be explained, and the cross changed into a crown ; 



170 Immortality of the Soul. 

the battle into a victory and the tears into jewels to 
shine on our foreheads forever? Is man created 
only for the c^ires, sins, sufferings and curses of this 
life ? Then is God cruel ; then He is not a father ; 
then is infinite perfection a lie. God of heaven ! if 
I had no faith in Thy perfection, I would curse the 
day that gave me birth, I would go weeping through 
life. Had I no faith in Thy perfection, I would 
never smile again. Life would be the greatest 
calamity to man. But not so ; I believe in the ab- 
solute perfection of God, which whispers in my ears 
the evangel of immortality. Sure of this, I take my 
harp and in the midst of death, I sing 

" Light after darkness, gain after loss ; 
Near after distant, gleam after gloom ; 
Love after loneliness, life after tomb." 

In conclusion, let us hear the testimony of Jesus. 
In the Gospel of John He speaks the words of im- 
mortality when He says: "I go to prepare a place 
for you ; In my Father's house are many mansions ; 
were it not so, I would have told you." Oh ! trans- 
porting thought. Jesus busy over there preparing 
a mansion for my soul ! A thousand years before 
Christ David sang : " When I awake I shall be satis- 
fied with thy likeness." When Jesus had left the earth 
and was no more among men; from a dark dungeon 
in Rome came the words of Paul : " Henceforth 
there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, 



Immortality of the Soul. 171 

which the Lord, the righteous Judge, shall give me 
at that day." Who can believe in the Christian 
Scriptures and deny immortality 7 . It is woven into 
the very texture of revelation ; it is the discovery of 
the Christian religion. 

I have said my say. Do you in your hearts be- 
lieve in God and in immortality? Does this glori- 
ous hope warm your bosom and purify your life ? 
Does it lead out the noblest in you ? Behold an im- 
mortality of bliss, of glory and joy, and an immor- 
tality of shame and sin ! Choose as you will, but 
heaven or hell, glory or shame, depends on your 
choice. There, is Jesus Christ with a crown in his 
hand for the victor's brow. There, is God standing 
at the shining gate to greet all with an individual 
kiss. There, are the angels, the prophets, martyrs, 
apostles, saints, and heroes of every land and nation, 
beckoning us to " come up higher" and enter into 
the exceeding and eternal joy of our Lord, Shall 
we lose that crown, that welcome kiss, that immor- 
tal joy ? No ! good God, no ! 

Let us begin to live nobly, to do bravely, and to 
breathe the Christian spirit, and the Son of Man, 
who brought life and immortality to light, will 
make death's bier the birth-bed of Life Eternal. 



SUNSHINE AND SHADOW. 



SUNSHINE AND SHADOW. 



" Let your loins be girded about and your lights burning." 
Luke xii. — 35. 

" For our lamps have gone out." 
Matt. xxv. — 8. 



I have something to say this morning on the two- 
fold nature of human life. In the world of matter 
we have the handsome, sweet and luminous day ; 
and the night, dark, dreary and damp. The world 
of spirit has likewise its day and night ; its bright- 
ness and dimness ; its sunlight and shadow. Our 
pilgrim path through the earth, runs now, along the 
mountain crest, high in the pure atmosphere, with 
nature's orchards and silver streams spreading be- 
fore us and animating our spirits ; and now again, 
along the deep and dark valley, walled in, and 
threatened with frightful and thunderous sounds. 

Your life is made up of the two elements of joy 
and sorrow. Happiness and misery, gladness and 
gloom, go hand in hand through all the days of 
mortal existence. They are omnipresent. In the 



178 Sunshine and Shadow. 

palace of the prince and in the peasant's cottage ; in 
the heart of the millionaire and in the bosom of the 
penniless beggar. The philosopher with his empire 
of learning, and the ignorant, illiterate laborer — all 
have their share of weal and woe. 

Can you not recollect those days of your life which 
were radiant with great joys, full of sparkling mirth, 
of profound satisfaction and rapture ? Ah ! then 
you loved life ; to be, was glorious ; even without a 
yesterday, or a to-morrow, the life of that one day 
seemed an exquisite gift to you. And then there is the 
remembrance of other days, when the sky was black, 
the heavens draped in mourning, and the cup of 
bitterness was pressed to your lips ; tears like a 
stream ran from your eyes; your heart heaved and 
sighed like the troubled sea; and life seemed to you 
an intolerable burden, a curse, and a torment. 
Gladly you would have leaped into the embrace of 
death to escape the pains and pangs of life. Such 
is human experience. One chapter, written in let- 
ters of gold and living light, murmuring melodious 
music ; the other inscribed in characters of gloom, 
and whispering a sad wail in our ears. It seems as 
if the two were in perpetual battle, the one chasing 
the other. Like winter and summer, the one slay- 
ing, freezing and destroying w r hat the other warms 
to life and fruition. Light and darkness mingle 
in our life. The light is veiled with the thick cover 
of darkness, the darkness is girdled with a rainbow 
ring of light. 



Sunshine and Shadow. 179 

" Lamp of life, thy lips are burning 

Through the veil that seems to hide them, 
As the radiant lines of morning 
Through thin clouds, ere they divide them." 

God sends the sunshine, man makes the shadow. 
The gifts of God are unmixed blessings. His good- 
ness has no bitterness, His joys have no alloy, His 
love is pure affection. Like His own nature, His 
gifts are perfect. Whence then are our sorrows, our 
disappointments, our fears and failings ! Not from 
above, but from below. God does not scatter thorns 
on your pathway, He does not wring tears from 
your eye-lids, He does not wound your heart with 
grief, nor does God hide from your soul the sun- 
shine of the sweet heavens. You make your own 
life bitter and bruise your own heart, and stain your 
face with the tears of sorrow. I have heard of people, 
who hold God responsible for the long and linger- 
ing shadows in their lives. They are angry with 
Him, and call Him to task for the misery of their 
life, which seems to cling to their bones. " Oh/' 
they say, u God has been cruel to us, He has 
scourged us with a rod of iron. He has frowned 
upon us, and smitten us with His w T rath. What 
have we done to deserve such treatment ? Are our 
sins blacker than those of our neighbors ? Is it just 
and kind in God to pursue us with his vengeance, 
tossing us hither and thither upon the tempestuous 
sea of life?" Hearers, God persecutes no man, 
with anger and malice. He does not go about, 



180 . Sunshine and Shadow. 

to make this or that man miserable. He is only 
the author and source of every "good and perfect 
gift." v I confess, there are some problems con- 
nected with the existence of pain, which I am utterly 
unable to solve. For instance, here is a poor per- 
secuted, afflicted, wronged woman, she, as far as 
human judgment can go has been faithful, true 
and kind. In return she is smitten and beaten and 
tormented by the steel whip of want, hunger, wretch- 
edness and desertion. Why should it be so? I 
cannot tell. And here is a man, wealthy, honored, 
comfortable, enjoying in great abundance the 
pleasures and luxuries of the world ; who according 
to public opinion, has been mean, avaricious, selfish, 
tyrannical and deceitful. Is this fair ? How do you 
explain this seeming partiality and unfairness of 
the Divine justice ? I have no answer. To say 
that God punishes the good in this life, and the bad 
in the next life, cannot meet with all the objections. 
Yet a great deal of the mystery will vanish in the con- 
sideration, that the source of our troubles and cares 
and shadows is mainly human. On our shoulders 
rests the blame for the unhappiness and gloom, 
which like lead sit upon our hearts. Let us see: — 
I believe that God created man for happiness. 
Our first home was in Paradise, the land of light 
and life. Joy is the law in nature, the great work- 
shop of God. Every single fibre in the universe of 
matter, thrills with happiness. This globe of lands 
as it goes whirling through immensity, makes music 



Sunshine and Shadow. 181 

in the divine hearing. Yon celestial spheres, poised 
in mid-air, making a majestic arch of fretted fire, 
sing as they shine, "the hand that made us is 
Divine." Put your ear upon the soft heart of the 
earth, and you will hear the joyful sounds where- 
with the bud bursts into a flower, the soil cracks and 
ushers into existence a white lily, a purple-robed 
rose, or a mighty oak piercing the air and shoot- 
ing its branches towards the skies. Even the cup 
of the little insect crawling in the dust and eating 
away your rose-bud is filled brim-full with joy. 
The butterfly, springing from flower to flower, is 
full of glee. All the works of God wear the crown 
of rejoicing and walk in the shining, glittering garb 
of happiness. I do not say that there is no suffering 
in the physical world, but I do say that it is the ex- 
ception. The rule is happiness, health, sunshine. 

Advancing a step higher we see that in the 
greater world of man, happiness is the law. Reason- 
ing independent of all education and prejudice, I 
say that a good God seeks the welfare of His people 
and sincerely desires their happiness. 

He has given you a conscience, tender, delicate, 
sensitive. You can render it a source of peace, 
courage and sweet calm, or of contention, coward- 
ice, remorse and shame, a pandemonium in your 
bosom, a monstrous dragon, howling, hissing and 
tearing. 

He has given you a mind, a kingdom in itself, 
an inexhaustible mine, a well of wealth, an ocean 



182 Sunshine and Shadow. 

of beauty and truth. You can reap the sweetest 
pleasures, the dearest joys, the clearest, purest light, 
from this realm of your mental organism. You 
can say: — 

" My mind to me a kingdom is ; 
Such perfect joy tberein I find, 
That it excels all other bliss 
Which God or Nature hath assigned." 

But you can also made it a waste, a barren wil- 
derness, untilled, full of poisonous weeds, destruc- 
tive and bitter herbs, bruising thorns, and vicious 
insects, which will torment you and force you to 
exclaim : " Oh ! full of scorpions is my mind." 

The heart which the Heavenly Father gave you 
was so white and innocent and angelic! Do you see 
that little child playing on your knees, throwing his 
arms around your neck. On his rosy lips dances the 
sweet smile, in his eyes burns the living fire, with 
his merry laughter rings the household atmosphere. 
Ah ! Once your heart was like his, pure, free from 
guile, whiter than the virgin snow upon the heights. 
What a fountain of happiness, a heaven of sun- 
shine, is a clean, pure heart! But you have driven 
nails into that innocence and softness. You have 
dried its mysterious springs of joy, gushing night 
and day, and falling with liquid plash ; you have 
pierced it with the iron of discontent and of sin, 
and now it is torn, tattered, shrivelled and shattered, 
and as you hold it up in the light you see the holes 



Sunshine and Shadow. 183 

and scars and deep cuts whence your spiritual life 
is ebbing away. 

Where is the immortal soul which God. like 
a spark of his divinity, lodged in that frame 
of clay ? How warm and sweet is its sunshine 
when God, the supreme sweetness, is in the em- 
brace of his arms ; when pure, exalted thoughts 
and ideas, like white-robed priests, move around the 
altar and stir the sacred fire, that its flashing flames 
may arise to the highest heavens ! Oh, what joy, 
what rapture, when the spacious halls and secret 
recesses of the soul are filled to overflowing with 
the fullness of God, shedding rays of sunlight " as 
fast as the Arabian trees their medicinal gum." As 
is yon huge burning mass of fire in the physical 
firmament, so is thy soul in the spiritual heaven. 
All your sunshine comes from the cloudless summits 
of your higher life. The nearer you live to God 
the closer to heaven — the world of light ; the Christ- 
lier in spirit, the intenser will be the halo of glory 
and sunshine around your mortal existence. But, 
alas ! the soul is" too often torn from the 
heavens and cast into the mire and dirt, 
covered with the smutch of shame, dragged down 
and ridden over and crushed beneath passion's iron 
hoofs. hearers ! conscience, mind, heart and sou], 
are the ever-burning lamps in our life. If you sin 
against your conscience, the whisper of God in your 
bosom, you put out one lamp, and that diminishes 
the light, and if you put out by violence and ill 



184 Sunshine and Shadow. 

use the lamp of the mind, that will create a shadow 
on one side of your life. Blow out the lamp of the 
heart', burning so radiantly and so sacrificingly, 
and that creates a deeper shadow, thickens and 
lengthens it, — three of the lamps having gone out. 
And when you smother and choke the glorious lamp 
of the soul, then is your darkness complete ; then 
midnight falls upon your noon. " How great must 
that darkness be." 

Have I succeeded to show you, that in yourself 
you have the lamps, first kindled by God, which 
if kept burning by diligently supplying them with 
oil, you will have light, you will move in a sphere of 
light, and be a child of light. But if through neg- 
ligence, worldliness and the cold breath of doubt 
and scepticism, you blow out this flame in your 
spiritual nature, then your night will deepen and 
grow thicker and thicker. From light to darkness I 
from sunshine to shadow! oh! how horrible the 
change. You are walking through the fields in the 
month of June ; the flowers have opened their cups 
to suck the honey from the soil, the sun and the 
shower; the birds chirp gaily, and steal the blossoms 
from the budding branches, the distant blue is ex- 
quisitely tender, not a cloud floats there, the sun 
walks majestically through the trackless heavens, 
and shakes down light, warmth and beauty from 
His golden urn. Glorious day! Most beautiful 
sunshine ! To our raptured gaze, — 



Sunshine and Shadow. 185 

" A livelier emerald twinkles in the grass, 
A deeper sapphire melts into the sea ! " 

Suddenly you come to the entrance of a valley. It 
is no longer Summer, you are in cold, damp 
December. From the same heavens that sent the 
sunshine, comes a heavy, almost tangible mist, the 
valley is filled with subterranean sounds, its rocks 
look grim and savage. Thunderous is the run of 
its water, rugged and slippery, and along the sharp 
precipices is your path, each step is fraught w 7 ith 
danger, the atmosphere is suffocating, intense is the 
darkness, and grows intehser with every step. 
What a sepulchre ! What a night of rayless, joy- 
less gloom ! What a change ! What tongue can 
describe its awfulness ! Yet greater is the change 
from the marvellous sunshine of God's pres- 
ence in our conscience, mind, heart, and soul, to 
the total eclipse of faith, the blotting out of every 
gleaming star from the spiritual heavens. " How 
great must that darkness be?" 

If you bear with me, I will now go on to tell you 
how these lamps of life may be kept bright and 
burning. Feed your conscience with the oil of in- 
tegrity, honesty, righteousness. Have a conscience 
void of offence before God and man. Do nothing 
which will cost your conscience a single pang; noth- 
ing which will disturb in the least its delicate bal- 
ance. If the integrity of your conscience is placed 
in one hand, and in the other, all the wealth and 



186 Sunshine and Shadoiv. 

ownership of the round world, take the former a 
thousand times over. Ah ! did they tell you that 
you could be rich in a very short time if you would 
only put this one lamp out, or make it a little dim ? 
They tell you, that by one single blow at your 
conscience you would rise in reputation and glory. 
Curse the advice, curse the allurement, curse the 
promise ; cling thou to the integrity of your con- 
science; feed it with this sweet oil and you shall 
walk in light, and your bosom friend will be a soft 
pillow for your head in the hour of death. God of 
Heaven! give others wealth, give others honor, give 
others pleasure, give me the consolation of a faith- 
ful conscience. 

Then feed your mind and heart and soul, with the 
truth, love and holiness of God. Wherever vou find 
a pure thought, an inspirational idea, a constraining 
affection, a divine beauty of spirit, appropriate them, 
make them your own, and deposit them in the ves- 
sel that holds the oil of these burning lamps. 
Brighten the flame of your mind, by adding new 
truths, new desires, new resolutions for God, to your 
intellect. Be not idle, learn something every day. 
Trim the lamp frequently and supply it with fresh 
oil. 

Can you not make the lamp of your heart 
burn a little brighter ? Here is a candle burn- 
ing on my table while I am studying, burns its self 
away in love for me, burns its life out to serve me. 



Sunshine and Shadow. 187 



it 



"O humble and yet bright, 

Making thy sacrifice so noiselessly. 

Burning thy lovely life away to light, 
Diviner light for rue. " 

Can we not make our hearts to burn so royally 
and generously upon the altar of mankind, that it 
may add to the happiness, comfort, blessing and 
sunshine of the w T orld ? Can we not pierce the 
night of sin with the warm beam of love, shed 
from the candle of our heart ? 

Then, again, let us see if we cannot purge and 
polish our souls from every stain and spot that, like a 
diamond on our forehead, it may flash its brilliant 
light and reveal the purity, holiness and sweetness 
of God to this sin-darkened w r orld. Let us beautify, 
ennoble, sanctify and glorify our souls, through the 
grace of the Saviour and present it to Him, as a 
star, to shine in the firmanent forever and ever. 
And perhaps a poor creature, seeing the kind light 
of your soul, may find his w 7 ay to the heart of God 
and become himself an heir of glory. 

Sin is the great shadow of life. Sinning leads to 
sorrowing. At the time it may give you pleasure, 
but there is a sting in it, and will give you pain. 
Remorse, shame, self-condemnation, loss of peace 
and misery follow hard on the heels of sin. Across 
this fair earth, lies the black shadow of sin. The 
immortal soul of man is disfigured by its touch. 0, 
the curse of sin ! 0, the night and darkness of sin ! 
Let it enter into your heart and it will carry gloom 



188 Sunshine and Shadow. 

and death with it. Let it grow in society and in 
the world and it will bring in its train a host of 
curses, destroying the good, slaying the truth, and 
casting a ghastly shadow upon the sunshine of life. 

What the world wants is more sunshine. How 
much will you give, and how much will you ? 
How many of your lamps are burning? Is the sun- 
shine of your life greater than its shadow ? The 
wise virgins took oil with their lamps, and when 
the foolish were left in the dark, their lamps having 
gone out, the wise with burning lights greeted the 
bridegroom and with him went into marriage. Soon 
the same cry may ring in your ears, " behold the 
bridegroom cometh !" Are your loins girded about 
and your lamps burning ? 

Is your conscience prepared to meet its God ? 

Is your mind prepared to stand before the " judge 
of quick and dead." 

Is your heart washed, swept, and purged, ready 
to face the " searcher of hearts ?" 

Is your soul clothed upon with the beautiful robe 
of holiness and dwelling far above the corruptions 
of the world, the temptations of sin, the bondage and 
the darkness of the flesh ? 

Is it ready to receive the summons and soar to the 
realms of perennial sunshine? 

Are these lights trimmed and burning with 
splendid radiance? 

Are you in the dark, struggling and groping in 
a night of sin ? It is my mission and privilege to 



Sunshine and Shadow. 189 

take you by the hand this morning and lead you to 
Jesus Christ the " light of the world." He will lift 
His face and shine upon you. He will lead you out 
of your darkness into the marvellous light of His 
gospel. " The bruised reed He will not break ; 
and the smoking candle, He will not quench." 
Oh! the power of His gentleness, the depth of His 
compassion. This Jesus I bring to your door. Be- 
lieve on the Lord Jesus Christ and your sun will 
reach the noonday hight, illumining every corner 
and crevice of your life and all the shadow 7 will be 
swallowed up in sunshine. 

This morning, may we rebuild the fallen altar, 
rekindle the extinguished fire, strike sparks upon 
the lamps gone out, and begin a new life with all 
the glow and sunshine of heaven, fairer than the 
rosy morning that kisses the cheeks of the sky, and 
lovelier than the starlight night with a million 
jewels on its diadem. 



M 



REASON AND RELIGION 



REASON AND RELIGION 



" And be ready always to give an answer to every man that 
aslceth you a reason of the hope that is in you." 

I Peter iii. — 15. 



The eloquent Chalmers, of Scotland, has said : — 
" No man, whether learned or unlearned, can have 
the faith to be a Christian without having a reason 
for it." An equally eminent Christian philosopher 
has said, that " To believe in Christianity with- 
out knowing why we believe in it, is not faith but 
blind credulity." God has made a revelation not 
only to the soul, but also to the head and intellect. 
The Divine Christ stands not only at the door of the 
heart and knocks for admission, but also at the door 
of reason. " Love the Lord, thy God, with all thy 
heart and mind," is the commandment of the Scrip- 
tures. The foundations of religion are laid not only 
in the emotional and spiritual, but also in the intel- 
lectual nature of man. Reason has its own say in 
matters of religion. Reason and faith are twin sis- 
ters ; there is no quarreling between them. I am 
sorry to think that some people separate the one 



196 Reason and Religion. 

from the other and create a chasm, a fixed gulph be- 
tween them. It is affirmed that religion is merely 
a matter of faith, and has nothing to do with rea- 
son. Argument and logic are said to be out of place 
in the domain of the supernatural. You may be- 
lieve, accept, give your assent, but you must not 
reason nor argue. For centuries this has been the 
position of the Latin Church in the Occident and 
the Levant. Whatever the ecclesiastical heads 
said, was law and faith for the common people. 
They could not investigate ; they could not reason 
for themselves. It was 



" Not theirs to reason why, 
Not theirs to make reply, 
Theirs but to do and die." 



The masses had no conscience, no opinion of their 
own; no freedom of faith. St. Peter's chair ruled 
their beliefs as readily as their purses. To argue 
and apply the intellectual method was deemed blas- 
phemous. 

Science and philosophy could not enter the realm 
of religion without committing sacrilege. Hence, 
when a certain Gallileo, a student of nature, comes 
forth with a new truth in his hands, the Church 
puts her hand on the philosopher's mouth, crying, 
" Hush !" " Your discovery," they tell him, " con- 
tradicts and overthrows our faith ; therefore, you 
are wrong." Says Gallileo to them : " Revise your 



Reason and Religion. 197 

faith and make it reasonable. I cannot help it if it 
clashes with your theories of the earth ; my discov- 
ery is a mathematical fact." " But," said the Church, 
"we will not reason; you must hush." So, they 
being in power, cast him into a dungeon, and 
put chains on his lips. Thus with every great dis- 
covery and movement towards the light, the Latin 
Church denounced them as hostile to faith and 
heretical and atheistic in tendency. She com- 
manded her children to " believe." If anyone had 
the courage to say, " Well, I cannot accept that arti- 
cle of the creed, and think it to be unreasonable," 
the Church cried in his face : " Oh, you sceptic, you 
heretic, you rationalist ! you want to reason before 
you believe, do you ? Come with me !" and he was 
led to the stake and burned alive. Reason was 
cursed as carnal, and investigation and search held 
up as impious. The priest pinched the forehead of 
every Catholic and stamped their brains with re- 
ligious bigotry. It burned Bruno, reduced Gallileo 
to silence, and spread the thick night of ignorance 
over all Europe. It excommunicated every man of 
genius, every master mind, every broad heart and 
head. It canonized and made a saint out of every 
mean bigot and filthy fanatic. In one word, so long 
as the dead hand of Pope Gregory, with an iron 
tyranny, ruled Christendom, reason was placed 
under the ban. 

But the reaction came. Reason gathered her 
forces and rose in arms against the despotism of 



198 Reason and Religion. 

church authority. King and priest were dethroned, 
the sceptre wrested from their grasp, and the purple 
torn from the shoulders of St. Peter's successor. 
Like a rainbow, Reason girdled the heavens with a 
luminous ring, and led in person the human forces 
to the field of action. 

It, in turn, thrust her dagger deep into the heart 
of superstition, fear and blind credulity. It exposed 
the shame of fanaticism and every fabrication of 
man. It rang the death knell of witchcraft and 
priestcraft. Like an irresistible hurricane, it swept 
away every barrier and gave free course to the 
Amazonian river of human thought. It shattered 
to pieces the heavy chains that had bondaged the 
mind for ages. Like an angel heralding a new 
day, she stood upon the gilded hill, her feet softly 
pressing the heights, and in her mouth a green 
branch. Thus the age of reason was ushered 
in. 

Again it grieves me to think, that the mistake 
committed by the enemies of reason, has been re- 
peated by her friends. Reason has been abused 
by forcing her to fight faith down. She has been 
armed to take vengence, and return the blows 
dealt by the age of priestly misrule. Hence the 
cry of the present era, very often is : " Down with 
faith, down with church, down with religion." Thus 
history presents to us two extremes, dangerous and 
unreasonable, and with extremes we have nothing 
to do. 



Reason and Religion. 199 

Our position may be summed up in a single phrase. 
Reason and faith, have each their proper sphere 
and render incalculable service to each other. I 
would like to say a word to those who have organ- 
ized themselves against faith, and aim to banish 
it altogether from the world. I shall make an asser- 
tion, it is this : The moment you withdraw faith 
entirely out of the arena of life, that instant, quick 
as the flash of lightning, the great wheel of humanity 
shall come to a standstill. That moment the 
world's heart shall cease to palpitate ; that mo- 
ment all aspiration, lofty longing, hoping and proph- 
ecying shall come to an end. In all the spheres 
of thought, faith is indispensable. Let us begin 
with the world of science. Can scientific men afford 
to part with faith ? Here is an astronomer who has 
built a telescope for the survey of the stars. He has 
faith, that the laws of nature will remain the same 
to-morrow as they were yesterday. He is not sure of 
it, for what man knows what a day may bring forth. 
But he has faith, in the honesty and truthfulness of 
nature. He has good grounds to believe that the 
shiniug stars will not run away, but be friendly and 
peep through his leases. He has faith that in his 
calculations nature's faithfulness will help him. He 
predicts an eclipse, or the birth of a new star. 
" Twenty-five years hence/' he says, " there will be 
a new jewel on the diadem of night." He studied 
the movements of the celestial bodies, and found 
that a certain planet, in its movements, was in- 



200 Reason and Religion. 

fluenced by an invisible orb. He calculated that so 
many miles to the right or to the left of it, there must 
be some other body which, travelling at a certain 
rate, will be seen on a certain spot at a given date. 
His prophecy is fulfilled. Now this was not all 
knowledge, most of it was faith ; not blind and 
unreasonable, but a rational, intelligent faith in 
the fixity and fidelity and trustworthiness of great 
nature. 

Thus, in the commercial world, faith is more than 
gold, more than thrift, more than pluck. If you 
had no faith that certain causes will lead to certain 
results, could you have the courage to enter the 
arena of toil ? Could you invest j r our money and 
throw your whole soul into an object without believ- 
ing that the object was attainable? You believe 
that honesty, diligence, thrift, economy, will do 
to-morrow what they have done in the past. You 
are not sure, but you have the necessary faith to 
keep you in motion. Infidelity will relax the 
nerves of commerce. It will shut every shop in the 
land in the twinkling of an eye. It is faith's ex- 
haustless breast that gives sustenance to civilization, 
and spurns our flagging energies. 

Is it not so in the domestic world ? What a large 
amount of faith is exercised under the family roof. 
You feel safe and happy because you have faith in 
the members of the household. Lose your faith and 
you will be the most worthless, miserable, wretched 
and unhappy being on earth. Lose your faith, and 



Reason and Religion. 201 

your heart within you will fall with a thump. Lose 
your faith and you lose everything. 

Is it not strange, then, that faith so essential else- 
where should be banished from religion, and its 
place usurped by reason ? We are told that it is 
unreasonable to believe in the supernatural because 
we cannot see, handle, feel or taste, and because it 
does not fall under the immediate cognizance of 
our senses. I charge unbelief with superstition, 
bigotry and dogmatism. If In affirming a thing, 
one may be tempted to go to the extreme of fanati- 
cism, so in denying a thing, there is just as great a 
danger of being unreasonable, narrow and supersti- 
tious. 

Let us begin with the first article in the creed of 
Christendom. " I believe in God" Is that an un- 
reasonable belief? Does the belief in a supreme, 
spiritual being contradict reason ? Can you reason- 
ably deny the being of God? I tell you I have 
never yet seen an atheist. I have seen people w r ho 
talk as if they were atheists, but no person can be 
one in real life. God is so rooted and grounded 
into human nature, that as David Hume, the cham- 
pion of English scepticism says : " The human 
mind naturally believes in God." You cannot divest 
yourself of the overwhelming thought of the Divine 
existence filling all space and occupying all time. 
Invent a hypothesis of the universe without having 
recourse to a first cause. Say that there is no design 
in the world of matter and therefore no designer. 



202 Reason and Religion. 

Let matter, dead, inert matter, take the place of mind. 
Let a germ of protoplasm, a speck of jelly, posses- 
sing the " potency and promise of life " stand in 
place of God. Then we will ask whence has that 
original matter, life and motion ? You answer that, 
" life is the property of organized matter." Very 
well, but again we ask, " what organizes matter ?" 
You answer again : " the play of forces in certain 
directions." Then in the language of science we ask 
you to tell us, " what directs these forces in one way 
for order, harmony, design and creation, rather than 
in another way for discord, chaos, confusion and 
ruin ?" You hold in your hand the letters of the 
English alphabet, you throw them up in the air and 
when they fall upon the ground they spell great 
names, beautiful ideas, pure thoughts, noble pre- 
cepts, an excellent advice. What directed these 
letters in their fall to perform such a task? 
" Chance," did you say ? Which is more rea- 
sonable, to say that blind chance is at the world's 
helm and is the author of all the wondrous 
phenomena we see, — or infinite wisdom, power, 
will ? God is the great cause of the life and 
light 

" Of all this wondrous world we see, 
Its glow by day, its smile by night, 
Are but reflections caught from Thee, 
Wherever we turn thy glories shine, 
And all things fair and bright are Thine." 



Reason and Religion. 203 

" I believe in God is the creed, not only of evan- 
gelical Christians, but of all men : of Sir William 
Hamilton and Hume, Bishop Butler and John 
Stuart Mill ; Pascal and Voltaire ; Massillon and 
Diderot; Spurgeon and Spencer ; Luther and Hegel; 
Jonathan Edwards and Thomas Paine. John New- 
man, the great English catholic has said that — "of 
all things, the being of God is borne in upon our 
minds with most power." Ernest Renau says, "God 
will always stand for the full expression of our super- 
sensual needs." Vacherot, a philosopher and thinker 
of the broadest school and finest intellectual grain, 
thinks that faith in a Supreme Creator is the only 
inspiration of life, and that when God is gone, all 
the fire and glow of the soul perish. Atheism, my 
hearers, is unnatural and unreasonable What ! give 
up the belief in a Heavenly Father, who cares for me, 
and follows me with an unslumbering eye, and lifts 
me up when I am fallen, and binds up my wounds, 
and treasures up my tears in His bottle to transfigure 
them into jewels on my forehead in that land of 
glory. — I would sooner tear my heart out than be- 
lieve that I am an orphan, a child without a father. 

Again. Let us now see if it be unreasonable to be- 
lieve in a Divine revelation. I believe that God has 
spoken. I believe that the Infinite Mind has not al- 
ways kept silence. I believe that in this book we 
have a revelation of the Divine Will. Before me is 
the Book that has made a marvellous history. It has 
turned the world upside down. It has created a new 



204 Reason and Religion. 

epoch, and reared the most glorious civilization. Say 
what you will. Say it is a ''cunningly devised fa- 
ble/' Say you do not believe in it, that it is of 
heathen origin, that it is the fabrication of priests 
and the work of a superstitious age. Take all that 
is good and immortal in the utterances of Jesus and 
fasten them on the cold lips of a Seneca, Antoninus, 
Cicero, Socrates, Buddha, Confucius or Zoroaster. 
With the sharpest knife of criticism, play upon its 
most delicate veins and take it to pieces. Still 
the indisputable fact remains that no other book 
has exerted the power and influence which have 
gone forth from the deathless pages of the Chris- 
tian Scriptures. To-day it is translated into every 
human speech, murmured in a thousand tongues, re- 
peated in a million pulpits, girdling the world with 
its divine music, and feeding the hunger and thirst 
of mankind. Oh, Word of God, what attacks have 
been made on thy pages! What cruel and bitter 
and malicious slander has been spoken of thee ! 
What sharp and piercing arrows have been hurled 
at thee ! But, oh ! not one iota of thy charm or 
sweetness has been lost. At thy bidding, sorrow 
and disease and disappointment lose their sting. 
In thy presence the tears on our cheeks become 
telescopes of faith ; the burden falls from our shoul- 
ders ; the thorns weave a crown on our foreheads, 
and the cross of life becomes a symbol of glory and 
of immortality ! What power there is in thee 
to sweeten toil, to rest the troubled breast, to strike 



Reason and Religion. 205 

sparks upon the languishing soul, to light the 
path to the tomb, and thence to the realms of joy 
beyond ! 

•' Holy Scriptures, Book divine- 
Precious treasure, thou art mine !' : 

Is it unreasonable to believe that utterances such 
as those of Jesus, that have outlived the wear and 
tear of time, — which has swept away the words of 
other great men, — are the expressions of the imper- 
ishable, ever-throbbing mind of God ? Is there no 
reason in the belief that Jesus Christ is chief among 
ten thousand, and peerless in the world of mind, 
heart and soul? 

Thus with all the fundamental articles of faith in 
the creeds of Christendom, is it unreasonable to be- 
lieve that man is more than perishable dust, more 
than mere mineral matter, more than bone and 
sinew and muscle ? Is it unreasonable to believe 
in the immortality of the soul? I sit beside the 
dying, and I ask in earnest : "Shall we meet again ?" 
You tell me I must 'not ask such a question ; that it 
is unscientific, unphilosophical and unreasonable. 
I say, perish your science, perish your philosophy, 
perish your repulsive theory of annihilation ! Let 
love have its say ; let the heart prophesy ; let my 
soul believe that, yonder is the Infinite affection; 
yonder the bosom of eternal love; yonder the ex- 
ceeding great joy and eternal reward ! To believe 
that " this is a world without a God, and man is a 



206 Reason and Religion. 

body without a soul, and this a present without a 
hereafter " — can I say that this is more reasonable 
than faith in God, in spirit, and in immortality ? 
No ; not till I have lost all my understanding ; not 
till my mind is divested of every bit of information, 
my heart a void ; my soul sense-bound and passion 
driven ; no, not till then. Unbelief is the egg of 
all sin. Curse on its head ; the tornado's lightning 
shaft on its head ! 

Let us gather our courage this evening and ex- 
ercise a larger, deeper faith in the reality of religion. 
My hearers, all truth is insured at the Bank of the 
Infinite, and it cannot perish. Jesus rides on the 
shoulders of mankind ; and unbelief, doubt, and 
criticism, cannot cast Him off. The Divine Word 
is inscribed with the point of a diamond upon the 
walls of the soul, and no deluge of flood can rub it 
out. The irresistible gravitation of the universe is 
in the hands of religion. Infidelity is a lie ! and 
no king, no philosopher, no judge, no supreme court, 
no army, can make it true. Fear not ! God is, and 
not a sparrow falleth to the ground without His 
notice. Fear not! through eighteen hundred years 
of battle Christ has lost nothing. His cradle still 
sparkles through the ages of the world, and His 
cross still towers 

u O'er the wrecks of time, 
With all the light of sacred story 
Gathering around its head sublime." 



Reason and Religion. 207 

The pierced hand is at the helm ; the feet nailed 
to the tree; fly with the swiftness of lightning to the 
rescue of what is noblest in religion. The heart 
broken by grief, is the inexhaustible source of in- 
spiration, sweetness and love. 

The curse of man is on this infidel gospel. The 
curse of God is on the powers of darkness. The 
heart is up in arms against atheism, and annihi- 
lation, and the heart will win the day. 

4i If e'er when faith had fallen to sleep, 
I heard a voice, * Believe no more, ' 
And heard an ever-breaking shore 
That tumbled in the Godless deep, 

" A warmth within the heart would melt 
The freezing reason's colder part, 
And like a man in wrath, the heart 
Stood up and answered, : I have felt.' 1 " 

Fast advances the day when reason and faith 
shall stand together at the altar of religion, " and 
to the litany of their worship all the people shall say 



Through this dark and stormy night. 
Faith beholds a feeble light 

Up the blackness streaking; 
Knowing God's own time is best. 
In a patient hope I rest, 

For the full day-breaking." 

N 



208 Reason and Religion. 

u Two angels guide 
The path of man, both a^ed and yet young, 
As -angels are, ripening through endless years. 
On one he leans ; some call her memory, 
And some tradition ; and her voice is sweet, 
With deep, mysterious accords ; the other, 
Floating above, holds down a lamp which streams 
A light divine and searching on the earth, 
Compelling eyes and footsteps. Memory yields, 
Yet clings with loving check and shines anew, 
Reflecting all the rays of that bright lamp 
Our angel reason holds." 



NOTES. 



ARMENIANS. 



Aram or Armen, was the first king of the Armenians, and 
his people after him, were called "Armenians." They are 
also called Haiks, after the great conqueror Haig, who forms 
the first chapter of Armenian history. 

Gregory the Illuminator, was the apostle of Armenia. He 
was the son of wicked parents. His father assassinated the 
Prince and is despised by all Armenians. Gregory, however, 
is the greatest and brightest name in Armenian history. 

The missionaries laboring among the Armenians, are 
sent by the A. B. C. F. M. Recently to the disappointment 
of the Congregationalists, the "Disciples of Christ" and 
Baptists have also sent their missionaries to this field. 



CONSTANTINOPLE. 



The missionaries do not directly preach to the Moham- 
medans. If a Mussulman chooses to come and hear the 
gospel, they are certainly made welcome. I have heard of one 
Turk who received baptism, but whether from conviction or 
other motives, am not able to state. The missionaries have 
failed, as far as the conversion of the Mohammedan is con- 
cerned. 

Kobert College, was founded through the generosity of 
Christopher Robert, a merchant of New York. About three 
years ago, this noble philanthrophist died in Paris. Cyrus 
Hamlin is the father of the college, as it is the fruit of 
his earnest labors in the Levant. At present, under George 
Washburn, it is enjoying great prosperity and has even 
Mussulman students. 

Eobert College is not a missionary institution, as is the 
college at Beytout, in Syria. It compares favorably with the 
best American colleges. 



WHAT IS GOD ? 



In the old church at Ainasia, Turkey in Asia, there is 
a ghastly picture of hell, before which candles are burnt, 
and men and women kneel tremblingly and pray to be deliv- 
ered from such torment as shadowed forth by the picture. 
The motive is purely one of fear, dread of punishment, which 
is the meanest and basest motive one can have to serve God. 

Calvin was not the friend of Servetus. We must remem- 
ber the spirit of the age in which he lived, before we judge 
him too severely. Some people say, that Calvin had no part 
in the burning of Servetus. It is, however, beyond dispute, 
that he at least encouraged the execution of the plan pro- 
posed. 



RECOGNITION OF FRIENDS. 



c There is a reaper whose name is death, 

And with his sickle keen, 
He reaps the bearded grain at a breath, 
And the flowers that grow between. 

1 Shall I have nought that's fair ?' said he — 
c Have nought but the bearded grain ? 

Though the breath of these flowers is sweet to me, 
I will give them all back again. ' 

He gazed at the flowers with tearful eyes, 

He kissed their drooping leaves ; 
It was for the Lord of Paradise 

He bound them in his sheaves. 

4 My Lord hath need of the flowerets gay, 5 

The reaper said, and smiled ; 
c Dear tokens of the earth are they, 

Where He was once a child. 

They shall all bloom in fields of light, 

Transplanted by my care ; 
And saints upon their garments white 

These sacred blossoms wear. 5 

And the mother gave, in tears and pain, 

The flowers she most did love ; 
She knew she would find them all again 

In the fields of light above. 

O, not in cruelty, not in wrath, 

The reaper came that day ; 
'Twas an angel visited the green earth, 

And took the flowers away." 



THE MISSION OF WOMAN. 



I will go forth 'mong'men, not mailed in scorn 
But in the armor of a pure intent ; 
Great duties are before me, and great aims\ 
And whether crowned or crownless whern I fall, 
It matters not, so that God's work is done. 
I've learned to prize the quiet lightning deed, 
Not the applauding thunder at its heels, 
Which men call fame. ' ' 



Florence Nightingale was the sweetest character that 
walked through the streets of Scutary, on the Bosphorus, 
during the war with Eussia. The soldier barracks at Scu- 
tary, are her monument. How much good can a woman do 
inspired by love ? 

" Beside the bed where parting life was laid, 
And sorrow, guilt, and pain, by turn dismay'd, 
The generous champion stood ; at her control, 
Despair and anguish fled the struggling soul ; 
Comfort came down, the trembling wretch to raise, 
And last faltering accents whisper 'd praise." 



cc 



It is not growing like a tree, 

In bulk doth make man better be ; 

Or standing long, an oak three hundred year, 

To fall a log at last, dry, bald and sere ; 

A lily of a day, 

Is fairer, far, in May. 

Although it fall and die that night, 

It was the plant and flower of light. 

In small proportions we past beauties see, 

And in short measures life may perfect be. " 



REASON AND RELIGION. 



''* Yes, Faith will linger in this troubled world, 
Till earth shall crumble into dust ; 
Until hope hath her radiant banner furled, 
Conscience resigned her holy trust. 

" There must be Faith, while there are hearts to beat 

With rapture for another's sake ; 
. While pulses hurry at the joy to meet, 

And o'er one parting, pause and speak. 

u While there are eyes to kindle and to weep, 
Or sink beneath another's glance ; 
Bright visions hover on the brow of sleep, 
As if the soul lay in a trance. 

" Where love still dwells, there must be holy Faith; 
How could He watch the loved one die, 
Without the fervent trust that shows him death 
Is herald of eternity. 

" Would'stthou reach the farther heaven, 
Touch the coolness of the blue, 
Would'st thou bathe thy weary earth-wings 
In the love of distilled dew ; 

" Woulds't thou gather flowers unfading, 
From the banks of Jordan's River ? 
Would'st thou sip the sweet repentance 
Which destroys the dark forever. 



218 Reason and Religion. 

" Cast aside the clogs and fetters from thy naked, shivering 

soul ; 
Throw away the rags which bind her, fear and hate and 

all control ; 
Past philosophy and science with their forked divining 

rod, 
Past the scavengers of reason with their searchings after 

no God ; 
Past the smoke and din, and clatter of the toiling, moiling 

earth, 
To the region pure and silent where the springs of truth 

have birth." 



